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■THAILAND

Brothers shot in Pattani

Suspected separatist militants shot dead two Buddhists and set their bodies ablaze yesterday in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south, a police officer said. The two men, brothers aged 40 and 36, were killed as they rode a motorcycle in Pattani Province, one of the three southern provinces caught up in a separatist insurgency in which more than 3,000 people have been killed since 2003. “The victims were shot by an AKA rifle, and the insurgents left a note saying ‘This is a revenge on state officials,’” the police officer said. One of the victims was an assistant village headman, the officer said, adding that the identity of the assailants was unknown.



■CHINA

Self-immolators wanted cash

Three people who set themselves on fire in downtown Beijing came from the western region of Xinjiang after their “unreasonable” demands for compensation for a lost home were not met, Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said on the sidelines of the annual legislative session in Beijing. The family’s home had been destroyed to make way for a school. The couple and their son set fire to themselves while inside their car on Feb. 25 at the southern end of the Wangfujing shopping street in central Beijing. The fire sparked an alarm because it happened just several blocks from Tiananmen Square. This June marks 20 years since Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on student protests in the square. The three had not sustained life-threatening injuries, Xinhua news agency said, adding that the family were compensated for their home by the local government and given 400,000 yuan (US$58,480) in relocation fees. But they had also demanded jobs, an apology and reimbursement of fees covering visits to appeal to the government, the governor said.



■HONG KONG

Moon cake bribe backfires

A construction company boss yesterday began a two-month jail term for trying to bribe a policeman with boxes of traditional Chinese moon cakes. Chin Tat-yung, 37, handed 15 boxes of the cakes to a police officer inspecting road works his company was carrying out. The police officer, who was responsible for approving the road works, gave them to his senior inspector, who contacted Chin and returned the cakes, a court heard on Friday. Magistrate John Glass rejected Chin’s claim that he offered the moon cakes as a Chinese custom for the upcoming festival rather than as a bribe.



■CHINA

Wanted wife arrested

Macau authorities have arrested a woman suspected of laundering money for her husband — reportedly a relative of the chief executive of the Chinese gambling enclave. Macau’s Public Prosecution Office said on Friday that Lam Man-i (林敏儀) was arrested at the airport after arriving from Taiwan. It did not say when she was detained. Lam and her husband, Chan Lin-ian (陳連因), are on Interpol’s wanted list in connection with allegations of money laundering. Hong Kong newspapers have reported that Chan’s sister is married to Macau leader Edmund Ho’s (何厚鏵) brother. The statement said Lam allegedly helped Chan launder money in the graft case of former senior official Ao Man-long (歐文龍). Ao was sentenced in January last year to 27 years in jail after being found guilty of taking millions of dollars in bribes, laundering money and abusing his power to help property developers win construction contracts.



■VIETNAM

Tonnes of tusks found

Customs officials have uncovered up to 5 tonnes of elephant tusks smuggled in from Tanzania, state media said yesterday. The tusks were found on Friday hidden in around 114 boxes of plastic waste after being transported from Africa through Malaysia to Vietnam’s northern Hai Phong port, the Tuoi Tre newspaper said. The Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Dang Tat The, a national wild animal expert, as saying the tusks were from African elephants. According to a Traffic survey, ivory prices in Vietnam could be the world’s highest, with tusks reportedly selling for up to US$1,500 per kilogram and small, cut pieces selling for up to US$1,863 per kilogram.



■MALAYSIA

Bomb used as anchor

A fisherman has been using a deadly World War II bomb as an anchor for his boat, the Star newspaper reported yesterday. Local police made the shocking discovery on Thursday during a routine patrol in a fishing village in the southern Johor state. The fisherman had been using the bomb for several months and thought it was safe on account of its age, the Star reported. Police alerted the bomb squad, who removed the 160mm device to be destroyed.



■THAILAND

Ancient holy bead stolen

An ancient bead featuring the Hindu sun god Surya Dev was stolen while on display at Thailand’s National Discovery Museum Institute, media reports said yesterday. The stone bead, estimated to be 2,000 years old, was stolen on Thursday from the Bangkok museum. Police suspect the thief removed a magnifying glass that was placed into the top of the glass case so visitors could better view the 2cm wide bead. With the glass gone, a hole was left through which to snatch the antiquity, believed to be one of 50 remaining Surya Dev beads worldwide, investigators said.



■IRAN

Shoe thrown at president

When the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi hurled his shoes at then-US president George W. Bush in December, Iranian officials declared him a hero and hailed his gesture as a mark of Islamic courage. They were presumably less impressed this week when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was similarly targeted during a visit to the northwestern city of Urumiye. Ahmadinejad found the shoe on the other foot as he waved from an open-top car on his way to give a speech at a stadium. An Iranian Web site, Urumiye News, reported that a shoe was hurled at the president as his convoy drove through a central square. Security guards waded into the crowd but failed to find the culprit.



■ITALY

Venice ‘vampire’ unearthed

The skeleton of a woman who was probably believed to have been a vampire when she died in the Middle Ages has been uncovered in Venice, a news agency reported on Friday. Archeologists made the find on Lazzaretto Nuovo, one of the hundreds of islands that make up the lagoon city, the ANSA news agency reported. A brick found lodged in the skeleton’s mouth suggests the woman’s body was “staked,” University of Florence expert Matteo Borrini said. The procedure, according to medieval superstition, prevented “undead vampires” from sucking blood from the corpses of those buried near them, Borrini said. The woman’s burial is also probably linked to the belief that witches and vampires were responsible for spreading bubonic plague.



■SWITZERLAND

Einstein certificate for sale

The doctorate certificate that Albert Einstein obtained from the University of Zurich in 1906 will come up for auction in June, auctioneers Fischer Galerie said on Friday. An honorary doctorate certificate awarded to the physicist by the University of Geneva in 1909 will also come under the hammer, the Lucerne-based auctioneer said. Einstein was in Bern in 1905 when he wrote the articles that formed the basis of his relativity theory of motion, which won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.



■RUSSIA

Clinton ‘resets’ relations

Media poked fun at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday after she gave her Russian counterpart a “reset” button with an ironic misspelling. Clinton’s gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at their meeting in Geneva on Friday evening was meant to underscore US President Barack Obama’s administration’s readiness to “to press the reset button” in ties with Moscow. But instead of the Russian word for “reset” (perezagruzka) it featured a slightly different word meaning “overload” or “overcharged” (peregruzka). Daily newspaper Kommersant put a prominent picture of the fake red button on its front page and declared: “Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button.” A correspondent for NTV television called it a “symbolic mistake.”



■SPAIN

Cocaine cast intercepted

Police have arrested a 66-year-old Chilean who tried to smuggle drugs into Barcelona with a cast made of cocaine fitted on a truly broken leg, an official said on Friday. The man also had cocaine hidden in six beer cans and inside the legs of two small folding stools, police said. he was carrying about 5kg of the drug, police said. His left shin was broken, and investigators do not rule out the possibility that the injury was inflicted intentionally so he could smuggle with the cocaine cast.



■UNITED STATES

Molly Kool dies at 93

Molly Carney, who as Molly Kool was the first woman in North America to become a licensed ship captain, has died at her home at the age of 93. Known in Canada by her maiden name, Molly Kool won her captain’s papers in 1939 and sailed the Atlantic Ocean between Alma, New Brunswick, and Boston for five years, her friend Ken Kelly said. Kool grew up in the village of Alma, where she learned a love of the sea and sailing from her father, a Dutch ship captain. At 23, she made history by earning the title of captain, after the Canadian Shipping Act was rewritten to say “he/she” instead of just “he,” Kelly said.



■UNITED STATES

Wolves off endangered list

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Friday upheld a federal decision to take gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and the western Great Lakes off the endangered species list. Salazar said wolves would remain a protected species in Wyoming because its law and management plans were not strong enough. But management of the predator will be turned over to state agencies in Montana and Idaho and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah, in addition to the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Obama administration had ordered a review of the removal decision announced in January, shortly before the Bush administration departed.



■UNITED STATES

CIA destroyed key tapes

Court documents showed the CIA destroyed a dozen videotapes of harsh interrogations of terror suspects. The 12 tapes were part of a larger collection of 92 videotapes of terror suspects that the CIA destroyed. The tape destruction is now the subject of a lawsuit filed against the government by the American Civil Liberties Union. Heavily redacted papers filed in the case indicate a dozen destroyed tapes show so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods are secret, but they once included waterboarding, which simulates drowning. CIA officials have said they held fewer than 100 prisoners at secret sites and used harsh interrogation methods on about a third of them. Of those, three were waterboarded.



■UNITED STATES

Kepler reaches orbit: NASA

The Kepler space telescope launched by NASA to search for Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy has reached orbit, the space agency said. The telescope separated from its carrier, a Delta II rocket, 62 minutes after launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at the altitude of more than 721km, NASA said. Kepler will stare at the same spot in space for three and a half years, taking in about 100,000 stars around the Cygnus and Lyra constellations of the Milky Way. At a cost of nearly US$600 million, it will be NASA’s first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours, at just the right distance and temperature for life-sustaining water to exist.



■UNITED STATES

Arsonist convicted of murder

A 38-year-old man who set deadly wildfires in California was convicted on Friday in the murder of five people in the October 2006 Palm Springs fire, the Los Angeles Times reported. Raymond Lee Oyler, who was found guilty by a jury that deliberated for a week, faces the death penalty. Sentencing will be decided at a later date. The five dead were firefighters who were overcome by fast moving flames in the worst single wildfire casualty for firefighters since 14 were killed battling a Colorado blaze in 1994.


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