■ SINGAPORE
Residents battle prostitution
Some residents have erected street lamps in the hope that brightly lit alleys will keep prostitutes at bay, a newspaper said yesterday. The Straits Times said residents of Geylang, which houses the city-state’s red-light district, were tired of prostitutes roaming streets in the area, and were “ring-fencing” their homes with lamps in a “turf war” against sex workers. Residents were also planning to throw parties and organize community events to “claim back territory”, it said. “You don’t have to be scared. Without the lights, you always have to look behind you,” the paper quoted a 70-year-old resident as saying. Prostitution is legal in Singapore but soliciting is not.
■ HONG KONG
Court convicts cabbie groper
A high-profile millionaire businessman was facing jail yesterday after being convicted of groping two male taxi drivers. Stephen Gan Fock-wai, known as the Prince of White Flower Oil for his company’s health food products, was found guilty on Friday of fondling the taxi drivers’ thighs and private parts as they drove him home. Gan, 46, was arrested after allegedly groping a 34-year-old taxi driver last year. Another driver, 37, came forward to complain of a similar assault in 2003 and said Gan offered him HK$2,000 (US$553) to have sex with him. Gan was found guilty of two indecent assaults. He denied the offenses. At a hearing on Friday, Gan’s lawyer Lawrence Lok said his client was a closet bisexual and the incidents were a result of “suppressed lust.”
■ EAST TIMOR
Quake sends people running
An undersea earthquake rocked the capital yesterday, shaking buildings and sending screaming residents running out to the streets. There were no reports of injuries or damage from the quake, officials said. The US Geological Survey put the tremor at magnitude 6.0, while the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysics Agency registered a more powerful 6.4. The agencies said it struck 88km north of Dili at a depth of 11km. “The tremor was very strong and shook everything in my house,” said Ruben Ximenes, a technician for the UN. “All I could do was run away.”
■ BANGLADESH
Bus crash kills 18
A speeding bus lost control and plunged off the road yesterday, killing at least 18 people and injuring dozens, a police official said. Rescuers recovered 16 bodies from the ruins of after the accident in Tangail district, 80km north of Dhaka, local police chief Abdul Mannan said. Another two people died from injuries at the hospital, he said. Mannan said another 46 people were being treated in hospitals for injuries, five of them in serious condition. The bus was packed with day laborers traveling from the northern district of Kurigram.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Moonies get new leader
The 28-year-old son of Unification Church founder Sun Myung-moon has succeeded his father as the religious sect’s top leader, a church spokesperson said yesterday. Reverend Hyung Jin-moon on Friday became the chairman of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, taking charge of the Church’s world and domestic organizations. “I hope everyone helps him so that he may fulfil his duty as the successor of the True Parents,” the 88-year-old founder said at an inauguration ceremony in Gapyeong, 40km east of Seoul. The Unification Church evangelizes in some 200 countries. The Church, one of the world’s most controversial religious organizations, was founded in Seoul in 1954.
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