■MALAYSIA
Woman seeks 23rd husband
A 107-year-old woman, afraid of being abandoned by her current husband, is looking to marry again to overcome her loneliness, a news report said yesterday. The centenarian, Mek Wok Kundor, had married her 22nd husband, Mohamad Noor Che Musa, 37, in 2005, but separated in July when he was admitted into a drug rehabilitation program in the capital Kuala Lumpur, the Star daily said. Mek Wok, who lives in the northern state of Terengganu, believes her husband might leave her after he completes the rehab program and settle down with a younger woman in the city, the daily said. “Lately, there is this kind of insecurity in me,” she said, adding that she was lonely.
■MALAYSIA
Ethnic Indians give up fight
Ethnic Indian villagers gave up a high-profile struggle yesterday to prevent condominium developers from razing their homes, but one grief-stricken woman tried to set herself on fire as bulldozers moved in. The fate of Buah Pala Village has been a focal point for minority ethnic Indians, who are among the country’s poorest citizens and say politicians ignore them. Activists say it also exposes the country’s lack of clear traditional land rights, saying the northern Penang state government should have consulted villagers before selling the land in 2005. The top court ordered the residents to leave because they do not formally own the land, though they say their ancestors have lived there for generations.
■CHINA
New space launch center
The country began the construction of its fourth space launch center yesterday as the nation gears up for future manned space flights aboard a new generation of carrier rockets, state media reported. Work started on the Wenchang Space Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island, which will become the country’s first coastal launching pad when completed in 2013, the Hainan Daily reported. Chang Wanquan (常万全), member of the Central Military Commission, and Chen Qiufa (陳求發), head of the State Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, attended yesterday’s groundbreaking ceremony, the report said. The site is being built to accommodate the Long March CZ-5 carrier rocket, which will be able to carry larger payloads.
■PHILIPPINES
One killed in rebel attack
A government militiaman was killed and four were wounded in an attack by communist rebels, a police report said yesterday. The fighting erupted on Sunday when communist rebels attacked an outpost of government militiamen in Bulalacao town in Mindoro Oriental Province, 120km south of Manila. The combat lasted for more than two hours before the guerrillas withdrew after they failed to overran the militia outpost.
■MYANMAR
Two meth busts announced
Authorities seized nearly 3 million methamphetamine tablets in two separate drug busts near the border with Thailand, a state-run newspaper said yesterday. An anti-drug squad on Friday seized 220,000 methamphetamine tablets hidden in a car’s spare wheel during a search at a checkpoint in the northeastern town of Tachileik, the Myanmar Ahlin newspaper said. Authorities arrested the driver and were searching for other suspects. Also on Friday, police and soldiers raided a house in the same town and seized 2.63 million methamphetamine tablets and several rounds of ammunition, the paper said. Three suspects were arrested.
■ISRAEL
Astronaut’s son killed
The pilot son of Ilan Ramon, the astronaut who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, was killed on Sunday when his fighter plane crashed during training, the Israeli military said. Assaf Ramon, 20, graduated from the air force flying school three months ago. There had been much media interest in the career of the eldest son of the first and only Israeli in space, and broadcasters interrupted programs on Sunday to bring the news of his death. The single-seat F-16 piloted by the younger Ramon went down near the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
■IRAQ
Rotting fruit to become fuel
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki approved a project by a United Arab Emirates-based company to make biofuel from dates that would otherwise be wasted because they have started to perish, officials said on Sunday. Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, but its crumbling farm sector, which has suffered from decades of sanctions, isolation and war, is the country’s leading employer. Faroun Ahmed Hussein, head of the national date palm board, said the company would produce bioethanol from dates that farmers cannot export because they are starting to rot. It would be used domestically at first, then possibly exported. He declined to name the company.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Scottish firm rethinks ads
A manufacturer of Harris Tweed has dropped the word “Scottish” from its US marketing campaign amid fears of a consumer backlash over the release of the Lockerbie bomber, a report said yesterday. Harris Tweed Hebrides said it had rethought its campaign ahead of the launch of its fashion collection in New York next month after the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi by the Scottish government, which sparked fury in the US. “We are not going to promote ourselves as a Scottish company as we would previously have done,” said Mark Hogarth, the company’s creative director. “We have been getting a lot of feedback and we have had to de-Scottishify the image of the brand. If he had not been released we would not have altered anything.”
■GERMANY
Jet in emergency landing
A passenger jet made an emergency landing at Stuttgart airport yesterday, but there were no significant injuries, airport authorities and a passenger said. The Fokker 100, which was on a flight from Berlin’s Tegel airport, had problems with its landing gear, the airport said on its Web site. It said five passengers suffered shock and a stewardess was taken to a hospital for observation. The airport’s runway was closed temporarily.
■NORWAY
Labor may lose majority
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s Labor Party appears in danger of losing its majority in a two-day general election that ended yesterday. Polls showed the left-wing party was three seats short of keeping its hold on the 169-seat legislature. Stoltenberg would still have a chance of remaining in power with a minority government, because the center-right opposition has been unable to muster a united front. His top challenger is Siv Jensen and her right-wing populist Progress Party, which has gained support by calling for lowering taxes and tightening immigration rules.
■UNITED STATES
Body found in Yale lab
A body believed to be that of missing student Annie Le has been found inside a wall at a Yale University laboratory, police announced late on Sunday. “Shortly after 5pm, the Connecticut state police major crime squad located the remains of a human secreted within a wall inside the building of number 10, Amistad Street,” New Haven Assistant Police Chief Peter Reichard said. He said the body been not been positively identified yet. Le was last captured by a Yale University security camera entering a medical research building last Tuesday morning. She has not been seen since. She was to be married Sunday to Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York.
■UNITED STATES
Napping fugitive nabbed
A fugitive who eluded police for two days was captured in the small town of Dover, Kansas, after he took two newlyweds hostage in their home, only to fall asleep when they gave him pillows and blankets. Jesse Dennis Dimmick is expected be taken back to Colorado to face charges in a motel slaying there, authorities said late on Saturday. The 23-year-old was arrested after Jared and Lindsay Rowley slipped out unharmed when he dozed off and police stormed the home. Dimmick was shot when authorities rushed in, and later underwent surgery, though his injuries weren’t considered life threatening. The Rowleys were held captive for about two-and-a-half hours.
■UNITED STATES
Poet Jim Carroll dies
Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker who wrote The Basketball Diaries, died on Friday at age 60. He died from a heart attack at his home in Manhattan, his ex-wife Rosemary Carroll told the New York Times. In the 1970s, Carroll was a fixture of the downtown New York art scene. His life was shaped by drug use, which he wrote about extensively. He published several poetry collections, while his 1980 album, Catholic Boy, has been hailed as a landmark punk record. But it was his autobiographical tale of life as a sports star at an elite private high school in Manhattan that brought him his widest audience. The book was first published in 1978 and was turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio in 1995.
■UNITED STATES
Tangled lines kill skydivers
Two members of an elite skydiving team were killed when their parachutes got entangled at 1,830m during a group jump in Northern California. Bill Dause — owner of the Parachute Center near the town of Lodi — says the men were part of the Red Line jumping team, an eight-member group who was practicing on Sunday for the US Parachute Association national skydiving championships next month. The team was jumping in close formation when three parachutes became entangled. One diver was able to separate and safely deploy his chute, another died immediately on hitting the ground, and another died at a hospital.
■COSTA RICA
US-bound migrants held
Authorities detained 54 US-bound migrants from Africa and Nepal after their boat arrived on Sunday. Some were being treated for dehydration after several days at sea. Three suspected Colombian smugglers traveling with the group were arrested, said Sergio Lopez, a security ministry spokesman. Migration Director Mario Zamora said the seven women and 47 men would be taken to a detention center in San Jose to join 41 other migrants.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of