■THAILAND
Muslim civilians shot dead
Suspected separatist militants have shot dead five Muslim civilians in the restive south, police said yesterday. Gunmen entered the home of a 51-year-old man and shot him dead late on Friday in Yala province, one of three troubled provinces in the far south. Police said the man had been working as a government informant. Two other men, aged 18 and 34, were also shot and killed in neighboring Pattani province, while a 61-year-old man was killed in a drive-by shooting as he traveled to Friday prayers at a local mosque. A 31-year-old farmer was also shot dead in an ambush in Narathiwat province as he returned home from work.
■NEW ZEALAND
Family reunited after years
An illegal Indian immigrant for the last 23 years has been reunited with his wife and son after finally getting permission to stay, the New Zealand Herald reported yesterday. “I thought I would be going to my grave without ever seeing them again,” Abdul Jalil Patel, 58, told the newspaper, as his wife Amina, 55, and son Salman, 24, flew into Auckland airport on Friday. Patel emigrated to New Zealand in 1986, but his first immigration consultant misplaced his passport and failed to submit his residency application, making him an illegal alien. A string of immigration blunders followed and he worked illegally over the years. “I didn’t know I was breaking the law, I just knew I had to earn some money to survive,” he told the paper. A new consultant made a last-ditch appeal to the immigration minister in September and he was granted permanent residence, which allowed his wife and son to join him.
■HONG KONG
Bruce Lee museum planned
Plans to build a museum dedicated to the life of fabled kung fu actor Bruce Lee are moving ahead with proposals for an international design competition, the South China Morning Post said yesterday. The project involves the restoration of Lee’s former house in the Kowloon Tong district of Hong Kong, plus the possibility of building an adjacent cinema and library, the newspaper said. The competition has been agreed upon after talks between the government and the two-story villa’s owner, Yu Panglin, who has agreed to donate the property, which is valued at HK$100 million (US$12.8 million). The actor spent the last years of his life there before dying in 1973 at the age of 32.
■NEW ZEALAND
Ex-model works at abattoir
Nina Schubert, 25, a German fashion model who strutted the catwalk in London, Paris, Milan and New York for six years, is working at local abattoir, the Taranaki Daily News said. “I need to learn a trade. I only know modeling,” she told the newspaper. The 1.8m, long-legged, blue-eyed blonde who has been pictured in swimsuits in the world’s leading fashion magazines, said it was hard, strenuous, physical work. “We sort boned-out meat that comes down on the conveyor hot and still pulsating,” she said. “I’ve shown some skill and they’re going to give me some knife training for a trimming job.” She told the paper she did her last modeling job early last year and quit when she woke up one day and realized it was an unhealthy lifestyle. She moved to New Zealand in November and is now living in the small North Island town of Hawera with a distant relative and completed her first triathlon a week ago.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Charity cool on adoption
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