■JAPAN
Snake bites keeper
A man who illegally kept some of the world’s most venomous snakes in his tiny Tokyo apartment was arrested after calling an ambulance when one of them bit him, reports said yesterday. Nobukazu Kashiwagi, a 41-year-old port worker, was arrested for keeping the dangerous reptiles without permission, police said. His secret got out after he was bitten by an eastern green mamba, a highly venomous southeast African snake among the 51 he kept. He was arrested after returning home from the hospital.
■MALAYSIA
Thieves steal mooncakes
Robbers ran off with a bag of cakes instead of 1.9 million ringgit (US$560,000) in cash in a botched heist that left a money changer wounded, reports said yesterday. Two masked gunmen fired 10 shots at a money changer at Penang airport, the Star daily reported. Security guard Zainol Othman accompanied the money changer as he got out of a van and placed personal bags on a trolley. “In the midst of the commotion, the robbers grabbed the [personal] bags, thinking that I had already placed the money bag onto the trolley,” he told the Star. The newspaper said the thieves sped off in a getaway car with the bags, one of which contained mooncakes.
■INDIA
Star launches party
Film star Chiranjeevi launched his own political party on Tuesday in the temple town of Tirupati, cheered on by an estimated crowd of 700,000 fans, news reports said. Chiranjeevi, one of the most popular stars of regional Telegu-language cinema, said he chose Aug. 26 to launch his new party — called Praja Rajyam, or Kingdom of Subjects — because it was the birth anniversary of Mother Teresa, whose life had inspired him to serve the poor and needy. The few thousand police at the venue had a hard time controlling the numbers of fans who kept pouring into the rally ground. The railways operated 18 special trains while the state-owned Road Transport Corp ran 1,500 buses to bring the actor’s supporters to the town, the NDTV news channel and IANS news agency reported. The actor, who belongs to Andhra Pradesh state’s disadvantaged Kapu community, said his party would dedicate itself to working for the poor and deprived sections of society.
■MALAYSIA
Party protests Lavigne
The nation’s conservative Islamic party has said it will mount protests at Canadian rocker Avril Lavigne’s concert in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow, after failing to have it banned. The concert is an insult to Islam as the fasting month of Ramadan is due to start just a few days later, said Nasrudin Hassan of the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party PAS. “A concert of this nature is not conducive to teaching the younger generation to become good citizens, upright and competitive, but instead would weaken them morally and mentally,” he said in a statement.
■SINGAPORE
Tang pleads guilty
A retail magnate pleaded guilty yesterday to two charges related to the city-state’s first organ trading case, local radio reported. Tang Wee Sung, whose Tangs department store sits in the prime Orchard Road tourist and shopping belt, pleaded guilty to entering an illegal arrangement to purchase a kidney, 938Live reported. Tang could receive up to three years in jail and a fine. Sulaiman Damanik, 26, posing as a relative, had agreed to sell his kidney to Tang for 150 million rupiah (US$16,000), the report said.
■SOUTH AFRICA
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