■HONG KONG
Court told of feng shui lover
Asia’s richest woman, according to court testimony, was the lover of a feng shui master for 14 years before leaving him her entire multibillion US dollar fortune, a news report said yesterday. Lawyers for feng shui master Tony Chan said he and Nina Wang shared a “long-lasting, close and affectionate love” from 1993 to her death last year, the South China Morning Post reported. The pair allegedly had “midnight meetings” disguised as feng shui consultations during their secret affair, which began three years after Wang’s husband was kidnapped, never to reappear. The claims were made at a preliminary High Court hearing on Friday after lawyers for Wang’s relatives had claimed Wang was tricked into giving away her fortune to Chan in return for a promise of eternal life. Wang, head of Hong Kong’s Chinachem property empire, died of cancer at the age of 69 after signing her fortune, estimated at up to US$13 billion, to the little-known feng shui master.
■INDIA
Media hail probe landing
Indian newspapers yesterday were euphoric about the landing of a probe on the moon, marking a milestone for the country’s 45-year-old space program. “The tricolour has landed,” trumpeted the Hindustan Times in a banner headline, referring to the nation’s green, orange and white flag. “India touches the moon,” the Indian Express newspaper said. The probe made a textbook-perfect landing on the lunar surface late on Friday after being released from the unmanned Chandrayaan-1 orbiter circling the moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced. India now joins Russia, the US, Japan and the European Space Agency in successfully landing moon probes.
■CHINA
Faulty IV needles recalled
Authorities are recalling a defective batch of intravenous needles after one easily broke and became embedded in a baby’s scalp, the latest in a string of product safety problems for the country. The incident occurred last month at a maternity and childcare hospital in southern Guangdong Province, the Health Ministry said on its Web site in a notice posted on Friday. Sample testing on needles in the same batch showed that six of them broke easily, the notice said. The needles, produced by the Shanghai-based Damei Medicinal Plastic Factory, have been recalled by the State Food and Drug Administration.
■INDIA
Court decries handwriting
A doctor has sworn in a legal undertaking that she will improve her handwriting after judges complained that they could not read her spidery scrawl, media said yesterday. The radiologist from Thane, in the greater Mumbai area, had been asked to file a report in the case of a man who claimed that his underage daughter had been forced into marriage by a neighbor. The medic conducted an age test on the girl, found her to be over 18 and that she wanted to stay in the marriage, leading to the dismissal of her father’s case. But the doctor’s conclusions had to be relayed by telephone to the Bombay High Court Friday, as she was not present at the hearing and the two judges could not decipher her handwriting.
■MALAYSIA
Thai chickens banned
Officials have temporarily frozen the importation of chickens from Thailand because of fears over bird flu cases in its Southeast Asian neighbor, a newspaper reported yesterday. Agriculture Minister Mustapa Mohamed said the ban would be lifted when the situation in Thailand returned to normal. “Operations to prevent chicken smuggling at border areas have to be beefed up,” Mustapa was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper. On Thursday, Thailand confirmed its second bird flu case in a week, saying the virus had been detected in a rural district north of Bangkok.
RSS