■SOUTH KOREA
Roh’s brother sentenced
Former president Roh Moo-hyun’s elder brother was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison for peddling influence in a corporate takeover deal. Roh Gun-pyeong and two accomplices were convicted of accepting some 3 billion won (US$2.4 million) in bribes from a financial firm seeking their help in selling an ailing securities unit to a state-supervised bank in 2006, Seoul Central District Court Judge Kim Tae-hyoung said. Roh is the brother of Roh Moo-hyun, who served as South Korea’s president from 2003 to last year. The brother also was fined some 574 million won (US$450,000), Kim said. The former president is also under investigation in a separate bribery scandal over allegations that he took more than US$6 million from a businessman while in office.
■CHINA
Hysterics cause debate
A popular online video showing a woman going hysterical after her male companion refuses to buy her a car is stirring debate about Shanghai’s females, who are renowned for their demanding ways. In the video, apparently shot on a mobile phone or handheld camera and carried on the widely read www.youku.com, the woman is seen screaming at the man in a Shanghai car showroom.
■CHINA
Pollution sickens 160
More than 160 people have been hospitalized and hundreds of others sickened in the northeast in a suspected case of pollution caused by a chemical plant, local media said yesterday. Staff at a plant operated by the Jilin Chemical Fiber Group in Jilin city, as well as residents living nearby, started complaining of headache, nausea, vomiting and general fatigue late last month, the Beijing Times reported. About 1,000 people reported suffering from the symptoms and 161 of them had to be hospitalized, the paper said. Patients said they suspected they had been affected by emissions from Connell Chemical, a Hong Kong-invested chemical producer near the fiber plant, the report said. Environmental authorities have tested the air near the two chemical companies but have not yet been able to identify any pollutant, it said. However, the city government has ordered Connell Chemical to shut down its aniline plant and inspectors are staying on the spot to track the air quality 24 hours a day, the report said.
■AUSTRALIA
List gaffe prompts apology
The government acknowledged yesterday that it had made an embarrassing blunder by making public a secret list of treaty negotiations with countries around the world. The list of more than 200 bilateral treaties under negotiation or review includes a pending agreement with China to increase uranium exports and a revised defense treaty being hammered out with Indonesian officials. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in a statement yesterday that his department “is in the process of advising each of the relevant countries that the document was released in error” in the parliament on Wednesday. “The minister has and does accept responsibility for this error,” the statement said. The 58-page list is not classified. But its cover page carries a warning that such negotiations are “potentially sensitive” and that the list should not be “placed on the public record.” According to international convention, even the existence of such negotiations should not be revealed without the permission of both countries, it said.
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