■ MALDIVES
Gayoom headed for runoff
President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is headed for a runoff against a former political prisoner who leads the main opposition in the country’s first democratic presidential election, poll results announced yesterday show. As of yesterday morning, Gayoom had received nearly 40 percent of the 130,000 votes counted, while Maldivian Democratic Party leader Mohamed Nasheed came in second with just over 26 percent, elections commission chairman Mohamed Ibrahim said. Four other candidates split the remainder of the vote.
■ VIETNAM
Environment ministers meet
Asian environment ministers were meeting yesterday to discuss regional challenges, from polluted megacities to the common threats posed by global warming, officials said. Other issues on the agenda of the First East Asian Environmental Ministers’ Meeting were biodiversity loss, trans-border haze pollution from tropical forest fires and jointly managing water resources and oceans. The meeting brings together East Asian industrial powers China, Japan and South Korea and their Southeast Asian counterparts.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Court upholds jail term
An elderly man who torched Seoul’s foremost historical landmark lost his appeal yesterday against a 10-year prison term. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal for leniency from Chae Jong-gi, 70, who was sentenced by a district court in February for reducing the 600-year-old Namdaemun gate in Seoul to charred rubble. The district court ruled that Chae caused “unbearable agony” to the people and damaged a national treasure. The High Court in July upheld the sentence. Chae nursed a grievance against authorities over allegedly insufficient compensation for the compulsory purchase of his home a decade ago. He had previously been fined and given a suspended prison sentence for trying to set an ancient Seoul palace alight over the same grievance in 2006.
■ NEPAL
Plane crashes near Everest
Poor visibility caused a crash at a tiny airstrip in the Mount Everest region that killed 18 people, including 12 German tourists, officials said yesterday. The Yeti Airlines Twin Otter plane flying from Kathmandu crashed and burst into flames on Wednesday morning at an airstrip in the east, killing 12 Germans, two Australians and four Nepalese. The airport is the gateway to the Everest region and used by thousands of trekkers and mountaineers each year to access the stunning Himalayan range that forms the northern border with Chinese-controlled Tibet. The weather at the airport in Lukla, 140km northeast of Kathmandu, changes frequently and swiftly. Pilots are supposed to have 5km of visibility to land at the 550m-long sloping airstrip perched on a hillside 2,757m above sea level, Adhikari said.
■ HONG KONG
Court allows smokers
The territory-wide anti-smoking drive was facing a serious setback yesterday after three popular bars won a court ruling that may allow them to let smokers back indoors. The bars successfully argued in the High Court that health inspectors were wrong to ban them from allowing smokers inside on the basis that they make most of their money from serving food, not drink. Currently, only bars that make most of their money from drink sales are allowed to admit smokers, while those that make most of their money from serving food are not.
■ SUDAN
Dress-police stopped
Salva Kiir, South Sudan’s “president,” shut down a police investigation on Wednesday that saw scores of young women arrested for “disturbing the peace” by wearing tight trousers. The women were arrested by police who said they suspected them of belonging to youth gangs known for drinking, fighting and public nudity. But government officials said they were angry at the way the women had been targeted and treated after arrest. Kiir also ordered the immediate release of any woman arrested under the operation in Juba. Police arrested more than 35 women on Sunday night alone, angering bystanders by the way they pushed them into two trucks.
■ IVORY COAST
Toxic waste trial halted
The trial of officials from a local company accused of dumping toxic waste was halted after defense lawyers walked out on Wednesday, news reports said yesterday. The five lawyers refused to continue with the trial to protest of the absence of a representative from the Dutch multinational Trafigura, the BBC said. The 12 accused are mainly officials from the local company Tommy, which Trafigura contracted to deal with chemical waste from the oil industry. Instead the waste was simply dumped at garbage sites around Abidjan two years ago. Shortly afterwards local residents began to suffer rashes and breathing problems. Seventeen people died and up to 100,000 others were poisoned. Trafigura, which has never admitted any liability, paid about US$220 million in an out-of-court settlement in February last year.
■ MOROCCO
Illegal migrants disappear
Nearly 50 would-be immigrants have gone missing while trying to cross over to Spain, Spanish and Moroccan media reported yesterday. The body of a young man was found on a beach in Kenitra Province north of Rabat on Wednesday. The only known survivor, who was found nearby, said the boat carrying the migrants had capsized half an hour after setting sail on Tuesday night. Police have launched a helicopter search for the victims.
■ SOMALIA
Pirates free some hostages
Philippine officials in Manila said yesterday that 15 Filipino seamen and four other crewmen seized when a chemical tanker was hijacked nearly two months ago have been freed, but pirates were still holding 67 other Filipino sailors from four ships. Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Claro Cristobal said the seamen from the MT Irene were freed late on Wednesday and were expected in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates very soon. “All crew members are safe and sound despite the ordeal they have undergone,” he said.
■ ZIMBABWE
Inflation pressures officials
Annual inflation hit a record high of 231 million percent in July, piling pressure on the ruling party and opposition to break a deadlock in negotiations and form a Cabinet that can rescue the economy. President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and the opposition MDC held talks on ending stalled power sharing negotiations on Wednesday. But once again the talks proved fruitless. Central Statistical Office data showed that on a monthly basis, prices shot up by 2,600.2 percent compared to 839.3 percent in June, largely driven by high prices of bread and cereals. The yearly inflation figure was 11.2 million percent in June, official figures showed yesterday.
■ UNITED STATES
Official resigns over scandal
The head of Hawaii’s tourism agency has resigned after coming under fire for forwarding racist, sexist and pornographic e-mails. The board in August reprimanded Rex Johnson verbally and in writing, and cut his salary by US$40,000 to US$200,000 a year after a state audit found pornographic e-mails on his government computer. Johnson, who’s served in the position for six years, has apologized repeatedly, saying it was a mistake. But it was later disclosed that Johnson had also received and forwarded e-mails with racist and sexist content on his government computer. The governor then called for Johnson’s ouster.
■ LEBANON
Journalists from US missing
Authorities are searching for two American journalists who went missing during a vacation in Lebanon as officials cautioned it was too early to speculate on the circumstances of their disappearance. The US embassy announced on Wednesday that the two — Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23 — have not been heard of since Oct. 1 and are believed missing. They had been working for the Jordan Times in Amman, Jordan, and were last seen leaving their Beirut hotel to travel to Syria.
■ UNITED STATES
Mother accused by teen
A woman is accused of badgering her teenage daughter’s ex-boyfriend with hundreds of e-mails and text messages and threatening to post nude images of him on the Internet unless he started seeing the girl again, a prosecutor said on Wednesday. According to a Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, police officer’s sworn affidavit, investigators began looking into the matter on Aug. 21 after the 13-year-old boy’s parents reported that he had received hundreds of threatening e-mails and text messages from the woman, the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights reported. The parents told police that the boy and his 13-year-old girlfriend had exchanged nude photos of themselves over their cell phones and that after the breakup, the girl’s 42-year-old mother threatened to post the boy’s pictures online unless he reunited with her daughter, the newspaper reported.
■ UNITED STATES
Man goes on shooting spree
A man has been charged with murder after a shooting in a crowded shopping mall that left a store employee dead and sent panicked shoppers running for cover. Police officers shot and wounded William Johnson, 42, who has been charged with murder, aggravated kidnapping and two counts of attempted murder in the Wednesday afternoon shooting, police said. The employee was shot multiple times after a confrontation with the suspect at Knoxville Center Mall, police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said. The employee, identified as Ahmed Nahl, 29, died at the scene.
■ UNITED STATES
Court: no ‘Viagra’ missile
A court says a man’s New York escapade with a decommissioned missile emblazoned with “Viva Viagra” is a dud. A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that Arye Sachs’ antics infringe on a trademark held by Pfizer Inc. It makes the impotence drug Viagra. Sachs was ordered to stop displaying anything with Viagra logos. Sachs towed the 7.5m rocket last month to various spots in Manhattan, including Pfizer’s headquarters. Sachs’ phone rang unanswered on Wednesday evening. Pfizer lawyers didn’t immediately return telephone calls. The judge said Sachs’ use of the slogan could make people think his missile was a Pfizer-approved ad. The court also said he might “harm Pfizer’s reputation.”
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