■ HONG KONG
Madonna cutouts stolen
Cardboard cut-outs of pop diva Madonna in provocative poses used to advertise her new album have been stolen from music shops, a news report said yesterday. At least 10 of the 30.6m-high cutouts advertising the 49-year-old’s new album, Hard Candy, have been taken from shops since they went on display last week, the Sunday Morning Post reported. Record company Warner Music told the newspaper it was unheard of for people to walk away with nearly life-size cut-outs from shops, but said it did not plan to raise the matter with police. “We have had people ripping off posters before, but stealing cutouts certainly takes some guts,” Kelvin Wong, vice president of Warner Music Asia, told the newspaper.
■ MALAYSIA
Women face restrictions
Foreign Minister Rais Yatim says women traveling alone abroad should be required to carry a letter from parents or employers verifying the reason for their journey, a news report said yesterday. The foreign ministry said the was to curb the use of women as illicit drug couriers, but the plan was immediately condemned by women’s rights groups as repressive. Yatim has submitted the proposal to the Cabinet, the New Sunday Times reported. The plan is similar to requirements in some Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, where women need permission from their guardians to travel as part of Islamic principles.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Huge waves kill five
At least eight were people killed when they were swept away by high waves that hit a port yesterday on the west coast, a coastguard official said. Twelve others were rescued after the waves caused by storms and high wind hit the Yellow Sea port of Boryeong Namdo, about 185km southwest of Seoul. They were taken to hospital, where five were in critical condition, the official said. “Apparently, some people were fishing and others walking along the coast when the accident happened,” said Lee Won-il of the Taean coastguard.
■ INDIA
Chili market catches fire
A fire has broken out at one of the largest chili markets, burning hundreds of thousands of pounds of chili peppers and covering the nearby area with a cloud of stinging smoke. Firefighters were still battling the blaze hours after it broke out on Saturday morning. Officials have evacuated neighbors of the market in Guntur in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Residents and officials say the burning chili smoke has stung the eyes and throats of people across the city. “People are coughing uncontrollably,” farmer Y Venkateshwarulu said. Local official Kanna Lakshminarayana said 150,000 bags of chilies have been destroyed across a 20-hectare area.
■ CHINA
More officials dismissed
Five rail officials following a train crash last month that killed 72 people, bringing to eight the total number dismissed. Authorities have blamed the worst train accident in the country in over a decade on speeding and poor management. The five officials of the Jinan Railway Bureau, which oversees rail lines in Shandong, have been removed from their jobs, the Beijing News said yesterday. The director, Chinese Communist Party boss and another senior official of the bureau had already been sacked over the crash, which also injured more than 400 of the some 2,800 passengers aboard the two trains.
■ GEORGIA
Plane lands on mountain
A pilot successfully landed his plane on the nation’s highest mountain for the first time in 50 years. Pilot Tom Huber set his small Savage Classic D-MERG plane down on Saturday on a 2,600m plateau on Bavaria’s Zugspitze. He was given special permission to land on the 2,962m mountain in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in a stunt marking the end of the winter season. The last time a plane was successfully landed on the mountain was in 1958.
■ YEMEN
Ruling supports paper
The editor of an independent newspaper says a court has rejected an Information Ministry order to revoke the license of his weekly. The ministry had issued the order against al-Wasat, alleging the paper published reports that harm national unity and damage Yemen’s relations with neighboring countries. The paper has at times criticized powerful neighbor Saudi Arabia and covered anti-government demonstrations. All newspapers in the nation need a license from the ministry to operate. Al-Wasat editor Jamal Amer says Saturday’s ruling blocked the ministry from revoking the license without a court order. He says the ministry has not supported its claims with solid evidence and the court’s decision is a victory for freedom of press.
■ FRANCE
Muslim leaders boycott vote
Leaders of the Paris Grand Mosque say they are boycotting elections next month in the nation’s best-known Muslim organization. The move throws into doubt the future of the French Council of the Muslim Faith. Mosque leader Dalil Boubakeur said on Saturday the council’s voting system in the June 8 election is unfair and would dilute the role of worshippers of Algerian descent. The council has long faced tensions between Algerian- and Moroccan-backed factions. It was formed six years ago with the goal of improving communication between Muslims and the government. France has more than 5 million Muslims — the most in western Europe — most of whom have origins in former French colonies.
■ SPAIN
Calvo Sotelo dies at 82
Former prime minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, who presided during Spain’s rocky transition from the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco to liberal democracy, has died. He was 82. Calvo Sotelo — who governed from February 1981 to December 1982 — died on Saturday, his eldest son Leopoldo Calvo said. “A genuine political moderate, he obviously held things together through the worst moments of Spain’s emerging democracy,” said historian Paul Preston. Calvo Sotelo was ennobled by the king, made the marquis of Ria de Ribadeo and named a grandee of Spain for his steady hand during an attempted coup.
■ ITALY
Officer shoots self
A police officer shot herself in the head in an apparent suicide attempt on Saturday outside a stadium where a soccer match was being played, the ANSA news agency and officials said. The 42-year-old woman was on duty outside the stadium in Treviso, in northeastern Italy, when she shot herself, the city’s chief police official Filippo Lapi said, confirming earlier reports by ANSA. She was hospitalized in critical condition, Lapi said. Lapi said that police found no suicide notes and that nothing in the woman’s record had raised alarm. But he said that witness accounts and CCTV cameras appeared to confirm a suicide attempt.
■ UNITED STATES
Patrol horse knows its turf
Police say a patrol horse found his own way back through Manhattan streets to his stable after throwing his rider. The officer was treated for minor injuries after traffic noise spooked Aldo on Friday. The eight-year-old took off through about eight blocks to the stable. Police spokesman Paul Browne says the horse “knows his turf.” Aldo suffered a few small cuts. The 21-year police veteran riding him had some injuries to his neck and shoulder. Aldo has been a police horse for about a year.
■ UNITED STATES
Preparing for space aliens
A Denver man who wants the city to be prepared for space aliens is proposing a commission to deal with the matter. Jeff Peckman says the 18-member commission would form a strategy “dealing with issues related to the presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth.” His proposal is slated to be discussed next week during a “review and comment” meeting. The assistant city attorney says he doesn’t know what officials will ask about it. The 54-year-old Peckman needs 4,000 signatures to get his proposal on the November ballot.
■ COLOMBIA
Rebels kill five soldiers
The military says five soldiers have been killed in the country’s northeast in combat with leftist rebels. The local commander, General Paulino Coronado, says the five were killed on Friday in a rural area of Tibu, a hotly contested coca-growing region near the Venezuelan border. Coronado said on Saturday his troops mounted the offensive in Tibu against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February. Military command said the FARC blew a hole in the Cano Limon oil pipeline in the area last Wednesday, spilling 4,000 barrels of crude into the Tibu River.
■ MEXICO
Police recover remains
Police have recovered the remains of seven men who were killed and dumped along a road. The bodies were found on Friday along a road in the town of Garcia de la Cadena in the northern state of Zacatecas. Town administrator Rafael Martinez says the men were shot to death. Meanwhile police in Mexico City said a federal agent has been shot and killed. A statement said federal police agent Jose Gomez was shot twice before dawn on Saturday as he dropped off a woman in a neighborhood in southern Mexico City. The country has suffered a wave of organized crime and drug-related violence that killed more than 2,500 people last year. Several top-ranking police and federal officials have been targeted.
■ CANADA
St John bursts its bank
Wild animals, including elk and moose, were seen in large numbers on the highway along the St John River in eastern New Brunswick fleeing the worst flooding in 35 years, authorities said on Saturday. Swollen by heavy rains and melting ice packs that accumulated over the winter, the river burst out of its bank last Monday in several areas of the province, sweeping away homes. The downtown area of the provincial capital, Fredericton, closed down on Wednesday. Hundreds of homes and buildings were flooded along the long river and some 800 people were forced into Red Cross refugee shelters. While floodwaters were receding in the north of New Brunswick and Fredericton, in the south the river was expected to crest soon.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of