■ SRI LANKA
Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90
Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary science fiction writer who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died yesterday at age 90. Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome for years, died after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said. Clarke was also credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
■ JAPAN
Killer mother gets life
A woman was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for killing her nine-year-old daughter and another child in a case that stunned the nation, court officials said. Suzuka Hatakeyama, 34, fell to her knees in court to apologize to the boy's parents after the judge handed her the life term. The court ruled that Hatakeyama killed her daughter Ayaka, 9, in April 2006 by dropping her from a bridge into a river in Akita prefecture. She had been finding Ayaka a nuisance and snapped when the girl insisted on taking her to look at the river, prosecutors said. She later strangled to death Goken Yoneyama, a seven-year-old in the neighborhood, in a bid to cover up her daughter's killing, the court ruled.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Whale poachers arrested
Marine police said on Tuesday they had arrested a boat skipper and two others in connection with the country's largest whale poaching case. They were the first arrests since police broke a whale poaching racket in the southeastern city of Ulsan in January, confiscating more than 50 tonnes of minke meat. The 47-year-old skipper and the two sailors were charged with poaching whales at least three times between May and August last year.
■ THAILAND
Gypsy arrested for murder
A 31-year-old man was arrested early yesterday over the killing and attempted rape of a Swedish tourist last weekend on the resort isle of Phuket, police said. Akradet Tankae was arrested in Ranong Province after his relatives contacted police. Akradet is a sea gypsy, part of a community that wanders across Thai and Myanmar islands in the Andaman Sea. He had fled to Myanmar to avoid arrest, but his father convinced him to return to Thailand and turn himself in, police said. Hanna Charlotta Backlund, 27, was stabbed to death on Saturday when she left her bungalow to take a swim.
■ EGYPT
Mubarak issues warning
President Hosni Mubarak has warned that continuing insults to the Prophet Mohammed will send those critics into a dangerous abyss, while also criticizing the extremists who use these insults to justify their actions. Mubarak's comments come during an address on Tuesday broadcast live on state television in honor of the prophet's birthday. The president has not said who his remarks were specifically targeting, but they came amid renewed controversy over the reprinting by Western newspapers of a Danish cartoon deemed insulting to the prophet.
■ GAZA STRIP
Symbolic graveyard opened
Palestinians inaugurated a symbolic graveyard on Tuesday for factories forced to close by an Israeli blockade that they say is killing jobs. "The Main Gaza Cemetery for Factories" contains some 40 graves covered with the Palestinian flags and flowers. "The Plastic Tools factory, 190 workers became jobless," the inscription on one headstone reads. "The Print House, 150 workers lost their source of living," reads another. The cemetery was established by the Popular Anti-Siege Committee, a group campaigning against the border restrictions that Israel tightened after Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.
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