■ MALAYSIA
No MPs leaving UMNO
Domestic Trade Minister Shahrir Samad said yesterday that no members of the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) were resigning, despite calls by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who had quit the party, that others follow suit. “Nobody is moving out of UMNO ... none of us is leaving UMNO,” Samad said after a meeting between Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and UMNO lawmakers. On Mahathir’s decision to resign from the party, Shahrir, an Abdullah loyalist, said: “We have to respect his rights.”
■HONG KONG
Fake fundraisers arrested
Two suspects have been arrested for allegedly tricking people into handing over cash claiming they were collecting for the earthquake victims of Sichuan Province. Police said yesterday that a 16-year-old had posted a message on an Internet forum with the intention of luring people into giving him money. The second man, aged 32, had posted notices around the screens of ATMs asking that donations for emergency relief be submitted to a specific bank account. Investigations showed that approximately HK$8,000 (US$1,025) had been deposited into the account, which was the suspect’s personal account.
■NEPAL
Bus crash kills 25
Twenty-five pilgrims were killed in a bus crash and about 20 more are missing or presumed dead, police said yesterday. The overcrowded bus skidded off a mountain road and plunged into a fast-flowing river on Monday. “Eight more bodies were pulled from the river this morning,” said a police official in Dang district, 280km west of Kathmandu. “The confirmed death toll is now 25, and 34 people are undergoing treatment at various hospitals,” he said. Police said that the bus was carrying about 100 passengers.
■NORTH KOREA
North close to declaration
US Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill said on Monday that North Korea was near the point where it would produce an overdue declaration of its nuclear programs, but he declined to predict when this might happen. “We are getting to the point where the declaration is coming,” Hill told reporters. “I can’t tell you precisely days or weeks but I think we are getting to the point where we are going to be, possibly, getting to this declaration.” The declaration is part of a broader multilateral deal under which North Korea has agreed to abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.
■GERMANY
Bull charges through house
A family in Aachen were stunned when a rampaging bull burst through the back door of their house, charged around the living room, and then left by the front door. “The animal basically did a tour of the hall, the kitchen and the living room before leaving the building,” said Paul Kemen, a police spokesman on Monday. “It came in the back and went out the front.” No one was injured, but the bull laid waste to furnishings, causing an estimated 10,000 euros (US$15,600) in damage. The bull left after the owner of the house opened the front door for it. The bull was part of a herd of cattle that had escaped from a farmer and overrun part of the nearby town of Monschau. A hunter later shot the animal.
■GERMANY
Elderly suffer trauma stress
A new study presented on Monday by German and Swiss researchers shows that older Germans who survived World War II traumas are now manifesting high instances of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While studies of post-traumatic stress disorder in other countries — such as the US, Canada, Australia and Mexico — have shown that older people tend to have lower instances of the disorder, research by Andreas Maercker of the University of Zurich and Leipzig University colleague Elmar Braehler showed the opposite. Almost all the older Germans who reported suffering from symptoms of PTSD had been affected by a traumatic wartime experience, Braehler said. Often the effects of the trauma do not appear until after retirement, when people have been able to take stock of their lives, Braehler said.
■ISRAEL
More questions for Olmert
Police say they will interrogate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday in regards to suspicions he was involved in corruption. Olmert is suspected of illicitly receiving up to US$500,000 from a Jewish American fundraiser as bribe, campaign funding or money laundering. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said yesterday that the questioning on Friday will be the second round with Olmert. The prime minister has not been charged yet in the case. The donor, Morris Talansky, is scheduled to give a deposition to the court by the end of the month.
■IRELAND
Thief hides in suitcase
Police have caught a teenage thief who was hiding in a suitcase in a bus baggage hold, news reports said. The 17-year-old climbed into a suitcase measuring 120cm by 30cm by 30cm, which an 18-year-old accomplice placed in the hold before climbing on the bus as a passenger, the Irish Examiner daily reported. The boy in the suitcase then unzipped it and worked through the baggage in the hold, the report said. He was caught on Saturday on the route from Dublin to Cork when the driver heard strange noises in the hold and alerted police.
■AUSTRIA
Von Trapp hotel panned
The hills are alive ... with the sound of protest. Angry residents living near a Salzburg villa that once belonged to the Von Trapp family immortalized by the Broadway musical and movie The Sound of Music are fighting plans to turn the home into a hotel. Opponents have said the neighborhood is already teeming with tourists drawn to the area where the 1965 film was made. Organizer Andreas Braunbruck told local TV on Sunday that the neighbors intend to fight the plan announced by Salzburg tourism officials last week “with all means at our disposal.”
■ UNITED STATE
Corpse goes cross-country
A man who drove 2,900km to Missouri with a woman’s body stashed inside a perfumed storage container was charged on Monday with first-degree murder in Salt Lake City, Utah. Court documents say Michael Doyel, 47, told police that his ex-girlfriend, Deborah Jones, was strangled before her body was stuffed in the 190-liter plastic container for the trip from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Branson, Missouri, last month. Doyel is also charged with kidnapping a woman who was a passenger on the cross-country trip. She told authorities she did not know about the body. Authorities said Doyel used Jones’ cell phone after she disappeared to send text messages to her friends and family declaring she was fine.
■MEXICO
Donkey put behind bars
A donkey is doing time for assault and battery. The animal was locked up at a local jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after it bit and kicked two men near a ranch in Chiapas state, police said on Monday. Officer Sinar Gomez said the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men’s medical bills. ”Around here, if someone commits a crime they are jailed,” Gomez said. “No matter who they are.” Chiapas police have thrown animals in the slammer before, including a bull that devoured corn crops in March.
■MEXICO
Euthanasia drug haven
At least 200 terminally ill people from Australia, the UK, New Zealand and the US have visited since 2001 to buy a cheap, widely available euthanasia drug, a newspaper reported on Monday. The newspaper Reform cited Exit International, a pro-euthanasia non-profit organization from Australia that promotes Mexico as a destination for patients seeking to end their lives. “On the basis of Exit research, the best places to visit are the 20-odd [US-Mexico] border crossings, from Tijuana in California through to Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico,” the group says on its Web site. The organization says that, nembutal, a drug usually used to put down animals, is “widely, cheaply and legally available, not only in Mexico but in many other South American countries.” “Veterinary Nembutal is available for between US$20 and US$40 per 100ml bottle,” it says. “One only needs to know the location of a veterinary supplier and the labelling in use at that location.”
■IRAQ
Army launches operation
The Iraqi army launched an operation yesterday to take control of Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, the power base of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi Army spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi said soldiers had launched “Operation Peace” in the sprawling area of eastern Baghdad early yesterday. “The troops have entered all of Sadr City’s districts and are trying to arrest all the wanted men,” he said. Moussawi said the troops had moved deep into Sadr City and taken control of three quarters of the area. “The operation includes providing basic services for the dwellers of the city,” he said. A health official resident in Sadr City, who asked not to be named, said no one had fired at the army when they entered and the district was quiet. Iraq’s ruling Shiite alliance and Sadr’s opposition movement in parliament reached an agreement earlier this month to end seven weeks of fighting in Sadr City that has killed hundreds of people.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not