■THAILAND
Upheaval at Oriental Hotel
The end of an era is coming for Bangkok’s famed Oriental hotel. Kurt Wachtveitl, the general manager for more than four decades, said on Tuesday night that he would retire in May. The 72-year-old Wachtveitl is credited with transforming the riverside hotel that was built in 1876 into one of Asia’s leading hotels. “I decided tonight to retire,’’ he told diners at the hotel’s Le Normandie restaurant. Wachtveitl joined the hotel in 1967.
■JAPAN
Hong Kong stars arrested
Pop stars Kelvin Kwan (關楚耀) and Jill Vidal (衛詩) have been arrested for possessing cannabis on a visit to Tokyo, a news report said yesterday. Kwan, 25, and Vidal, 26, were arrested in the Dogenzaka shopping center in Shibuya on Feb. 24 when shopkeepers reported a man trying to steal goods, the South China Morning Post said. A police search found cannabis in a packet of cigarettes Kwan had, the paper said. The pair face a maximum penalty of being barred from Japan and five years’ prison.
■HONG KONG
Cop family in trouble again
A policeman convicted of mugging a woman is the third officer in his family to be arrested, a news report said yesterday. Senior constable Leung Wai-hung (梁偉雄), 44, pleaded guilty to theft after grabbing a 53-year-old woman’s handbag and punching and kicking her as she lay on the ground in July. Leung, who committed the robbery because of heavy gambling debts, appeared on Tuesday in court and will be sentenced on March 18, the South China Morning Post reported. Leung’s father, a former sergeant, was charged with the shooting death of his chief inspector in 1994 but acquitted. His younger brother was jailed for six years in 2002 after being convicted of abducting a child for a US$1.9 million ransom.
■AUSTRALIA
Stranded whale rescued
Rescuers slung a stranded pilot whale between two jet skies and returned it to open sea yesterday, three days after it ran aground with a pod of almost 200 whales and dolphins. The animals became stranded on Sunday evening on Tasmania state’s King Island. Volunteers helped wildlife experts refloat 53 surviving whales and five dolphins on Monday. Wild seas prevented a second rescue attempt of the last survivor until yesterday.
■MALAYSIA
Man killed in police custody
An autopsy revealed that an ethnic Indian man was tortured and beaten to death in police custody, a lawyer for his family said yesterday. Ananthan Kugan died on Jan. 20 after six days in detention. Kugan was arrested on suspicion of being a car thief. A government autopsy found he died from liquid in his lungs, but a second one commissioned by Kugan’s family found he died from kidney failure following a severe beating, lawyer N. Surendran said. Kugan’s back was burned with marks likely from a hot iron, Surendran said. Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail has said the case was classified as a murder and police were investigating.
■CHINA
No more wining and dining
Visiting heads of state will no longer be wined and dined with sumptuous banquets, cutting back the fare to just one soup, three dishes and no liquor. The scaled-down menu comes as the government encourages thriftiness in the face of the global financial crisis, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Arrest in Manchester robbery
A man was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of threatening at knifepoint the fiancee of Darren Fletcher, the Manchester United midfielder, and burgling the soccer player’s house. Hayley Grice was forced to take off her engagement ring, while Fletcher’s mother was forced to hand over watches and jewelry in a raid that took place on Feb. 23, just hours after the player had flown out with the United squad for a Champions League match in Milan.
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