■THAILAND
New beheading reported
The body and severed head of a man believed to have been beheaded by suspected Muslim insurgents was found yesterday in Thailand’s strife-torn south, police said. The remains of a 63-year-old Muslim villager were found on a roadside in Yarang district of Pattani province, police Lieutenant Anuson Janklap said. More than 30 people, both Buddhist and Muslim, have been beheaded since violence in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat flared anew in early 2004.
■PHILIPPINES
Rebels torch plane
Communist rebels torched a light plane during an attack on a plantation in the southern Philippines, a military spokesman said yesterday. The guerrillas swooped down on the plantation in Maco, Compostela Valley Province, 960km south of Manila, on Friday, said Major Armand Rico, a regional military spokesman. Rico said the single-seater plane was used for aerial spraying of fertilizers. The rebels disarmed and tied up two security guards, who were later freed.
■SINGAPORE
Feng shui alters Flyer
Officials in Singapore have changed the direction of the world’s biggest observation wheel because feng shui masters said it was taking good fortune away from the city, a report said yesterday. The Singapore Flyer had originally revolved so that it rose to face the business district and went down overlooking the sea, the Straits Times said. But feng shui masters convinced the management to reverse it so that it was not taking fortune away from the city. Singapore Flyer chairman Florian Bollen likened the change to the “completion of a perfect movie,” but said it cost a “six figure sum,” the report said.
■HONG KONG
Villagers fear bad feng shui
Villagers from a hamlet in the north were fighting plans to build a repository for the cremated remains of people, claiming the building still under construction has caused bad feng shui, a media report said yesterday. The building containing the columbarium in Tsui Keng Lo Wai village is already half completed after being converted from several houses, the South China Morning Post said. Speaking during a demonstration against the scheme on Friday, village representative Rico Yau said villagers plan to seek an injunction to stop the project. One angry villager, Chan Chin-fai, said: “We bury our ancestors on the hillsides. How dare the developers put outsiders’ niches in the middle of the village.”
■INDONESIA
Bird flu tests negative
Thirteen people in Indonesia suspected of having bird flu have tested negative for the feared disease, the health ministry said yesterday. Experts from the WHO arrived on Friday in the affected village in North Sumatra to help investigate a possible outbreak after three people died and the 13 were admitted to hospital. “All specimens collected from suspect cases have given negative results. They are all recovered,” I Nyoman Kandun, director general of the ministry’s communicable diseases department said on a text message. Officials and residents in Asahan district in North Sumatra Province said villagers began showing symptoms of avian flu after a large number of chickens died suddenly last week.
■AUSTRALIA
Bosses warned on language
A workplace watchdog has warned employers that swearing or bullying during workplace negotiations will not be tolerated. The national regulator said offensive behavior toward employees was unacceptable and against the law, following a court case in which a Donut King franchise operator who repeatedly swore at an employee was fined A$12,000 (US$10,700) for bullying and offensive conduct. The employer was accused of trying to force a staff member to sign a work contract, known as an Australian Workplace Agreement. “Employers need to mind their P’s and Q’s when dealing with staff,” Workplace Ombudsman executive director Michael Campbell said.
■INDIA
HIV couple slay children
A couple poisoned their three young children, then hanged themselves from a ceiling fan because they were depressed about being HIV-positive, police said yesterday. A relative found the bodies of Ishwar Thevar, 39, a film distributor, and his wife as well as their two sons and a daughter in an apartment in Mumbai early last week, said Rajkumar Vatkar, a senior police official. Vatkar said the children, aged between four and 10, had been fed food laced with poison before the couple hanged themselves. A brother of Thevar told police that the couple had tested positive for the AIDS virus two years ago and found out two months ago that their daughter was also infected, Vatkar said.
■CAMBODIA
Vote results released
The ruling party took nearly 60 percent of the popular vote in last month’s election, figures released yesterday by the election committee showed. The Cambodian People’s Party won 58.1 percent of the vote, compared with 21.9 percent for its nearest rival, the main opposition Sam Rainsy party, authorities said. National Election Committee official Sin Chum Bo said turnout was 75.21 percent — or 6 million of the 8.1 million eligible voters.
■SOMALIA
Pirates free two hostages
Pirates have freed two German hostages who were kidnapped in June from a yacht off the Gulf of Aden, a local governor said yesterday. The hostages were released on Friday night from a hideout in a mountainous area near Puntland, a semiautonomous region in the north, said Muse Geele Yusuf, the governor of Bari region. “Two German hostages have been released,” Yusuf said by telephone. He said a US$1 million ransom was paid, but it was not clear by whom. Piracy is rampant off the lawless coast, where kidnappers hold hostages for huge ransoms. Details of the release were sketchy. At the time of the kidnapping, officials said a German couple was seized along with their son and a French yacht captain.
■GUINEA BISSAU
Head of navy arrested
The head of the navy has been arrested after he allegedly telephoned senior officers and asked them to help overthrow President Joao Bernardo Vieira, reports said. “We have foiled a coup attempt that was to have been carried out early on Thursday by a group of officers led by Rear Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, head of the navy,” the BBC cited army spokesman Colonel Arsenio Balde as saying. Balde said that Na Tchuto, who is under house arrest, was turned in by senior army officers after he asked them to join the coup attempt. The country is in the grip of political turmoil after the president dissolved parliament earlier this week.
■FRANCE
Le Pen raising funds
Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen said on Friday the sale of his party headquarters was going well, a transaction that would help his party settle debts after a series of election defeats. Le Pen stunned the country when he came second in the 2002 presidential vote, but his support has since collapsed, leading to humiliating defeats in last year’s parliamentary and presidential votes that have left his party deep in the red. His National Front party’s accounts have been frozen in a payment dispute with its printers. The party’s treasurer has estimated that the imposing building, located in a wealthy Paris suburb, is worth up to 20 million euros (US$30.33 million).
■CZECH REPUBLIC
Train accident kills seven
A long-distance train from Poland carrying hundreds of passengers smashed into a collapsed bridge and partially derailed on Friday, killing seven people and injuring at least 66, officials said. It was the country’s worst train accident since a 1995 crash that killed 19 people. Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk were both heading for the site of the crash, their offices said. The accident occurred when parts of a bridge under reconstruction tumbled onto the track as the train was approaching. The driver of the train slammed on the emergency brakes but was unable to avoid crashing into the debris.
■SOUTH AFRICA
HIV medicines recalled
A major pharmaceutical company issued a recall of generic anti-retroviral drugs due to a packaging error. “Adco-Nevirapine tablets, with the batch number 1J, and expiry January 2009, and Adco-Zidovudine tablets, batch number 1Z and expiry date November 2008 should be returned without delay,” the company said in a statement. The recall is a result of improper labelling, with certain Adco-Nevirapine tablets packed in Adco-Zidovudine cartons. The company would not say how many of the drugs had been distributed.
■UNITED STATES
Cat becomes sensation
Fat, happy and no longer homeless — that describes life for the 20kg New Jersey cat who became an overnight sensation. A vet has found “Prince Chunk” healthy aside from his weight. The big cat doesn’t have a thyroid condition, after all. The vet also prescribed a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet for the tubby tabby, who is within 1.4kg of the heaviest on record. Some 400 people applied to adopt the 10-year-old cat, who once was called “Powder.” He was found lumbering around the New Jersey town of Voorhees after his owner lost her home to foreclosure. The New York Daily News reported the Camden County Animal Shelter has selected a south Jersey family to adopt the stray.
■UNITED STATES
At least 13 die in bus crash
At least 13 people on their way to a religious festival were killed when a private charter bus crashed north of Dallas, police reported yesterday. The bus carrying 55 people lost control on a highway overpass, slid along a guard rail and rolled on its side near Sherman, Texas, about 96km north of Dallas, at about 12:45am yesterday, police said. Police said the bus did not plunge from a bridge as some initial media reports suggested. Local media reported that most of passengers were from the Vietnamese Martyrs Church of Houston and were on their way to Carthage, Missouri, for the Marian Days festival, an annual celebration of the Virgin Mary.
■UNITED STATES
Group kicks out alleged spy
A group advocating stricter gun laws kicked out a woman who had been accused of being a spy for the National Rifle Association. The CeaseFirePA board of directors voted unanimously on Friday to remove fellow board member Mary Lou McFate. The group is also exploring possible legal action against her, though spokesman Joe Grace declined to elaborate. McFate, an unpaid member of the CeaseFirePA board for seven years, is accused of portraying herself as a gun-control activist while being paid by the NRA to gather intelligence. A Chicago-based group, the Freedom States Alliance, expelled her from its board last week. The spying accusations were first raised in Mother Jones magazine.
■MEXICO
Hernan becomes hurricane
Hurricane Hernan formed far off Mexico’s Pacific coast on Friday and continued to pick up steam, but forecasters predicted it will not threaten land. The former tropical storm is the fifth hurricane of the eastern Pacific season, the US National Hurricane Center said. Hernan had maximum sustained wind near 150kph on Friday night. The hurricane center said the storm could strengthen slightly over the next two days before moving over cooler waters and weakening. Hernan was centered about 1,515km southwest of the tip of the Baja California peninsula.
■UNITED STATES
Babies born 8/8/08 at 8:08
Meet Hailey Jo Hauer and Xander Jace Riniker, both born at 8:08am on 8/8/08, weighing 8 pounds, 8 ounces (3.8kg), in neighboring states. Xander, born at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is the eighth grandchild for his mother’s parents. Lindsey Hauer thought staff at Lake Region Hospital in Minnesota were joking when they told her the time of her daughter’s birth. And then she got a call from the birthing suite noting Hailey’s weight. Nurse Jenny Harstad joked that she tried to shrink the baby to 18 inches (45cm) from her actual 49cm.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the