■AUSTRALIA
‘Car Orchestra’ debuts
Ready, maestro; start your engines. A new musical piece called Car Orchestra, which features the engines and horns of five utility trucks, known as “utes”, alongside a saxophone, double bass and disc jockey, debuted at a music festival in western Sydney yesterday. Michael Atherton, a professor at the University of Western Sydney, says he composed the score to connect the festival with the local culture of the working-class Campbelltown area, inviting a local “Ute Club” to play the piece. “A festival’s concept of culture should be very broad,” Atherton told the Sydney Morning Herald. “People can expect to hear fanfares, jazz-funk sections, percussion solos. They will hear mag wheels played like Balinese gamelans.”
■HONG KONG
Big Buddha ride reopens
The troubled Big Buddha cable car ride reopened yesterday morning, a day after a fault left passengers stranded mid-ride for 90 minutes and forced its closure. More than 100 people were trapped aboard the US$125 million cable car shortly after midday on Friday when an alarm system detected two cars were too close together and shut it down. Staff had to push the cable cars forward by hand until the ride resumed operation 90 minutes later to allow passengers to disembark, but it was again closed while operators carried out further checks.
■THAILAND
Busted condoms lead to bust
An Australian man was in critical condition yesterday after swallowing condoms that were packed with hashish and burst inside his stomach, police said. John Paul Jones, 51, will be charged with drug trafficking when his condition improves, said police Lieutenant Colonel Weerasak Pokarat in Surat Thani township. Friends took Jones to a hospital in Surat Thani saying he had been complaining of severe stomach pain for five days, Weerasak said. An X-ray found he had 60 condoms packed with hashish in his stomach, weighing a total of 800g, Weerasak said. “Three condoms had burst, which was causing the pain,” Weerasak said. Jones had been staying on the southern island of Koh Phangan.
■SRI LANKA
Soldiers destroy bunkers
Soldiers destroyed two Tamil Tiger rebel bunkers the north while fighting in the region killed 11 separatists and wounded eight soldiers, the military said yesterday. Troops destroyed the bunkers in the village of Kilali on the northern Jaffna Peninsula on Friday night, a defense ministry official said. Two soldiers were wounded in the fighting, the official said. Also on Friday, soldiers killed four rebels in a battle in Vavuniya district, the official said.
■SINGAPORE
Court sentences smugglers
Three Malaysians were setenced to between four and 15 months in prison for child trafficking after they were caught trying to smuggle Sri Lankan children to London via Paris, reports said yesterday. They were caught at Changi Airport on Feb. 7 with the three children, aged 11, 14 and 15. Shangar Shanmugam, 39, was sentenced on Friday to 15 months in jail while his sister, Patmavthi Shanmugam, 31, was jailed for 10 months, the Straits Times reported. Shangar was promised US$1,000 by a woman known to him as Naga to deliver the children to London, the court heard. Naga made three Malaysian passports with false names for the children at a Malaysian immigration office. Shangar gave a cut of the money to his sister and asked her to pose as the mother of one of the children, the report said.
RSS