■NEW ZEALAND
Pilot killed in crash
An air force pilot in the elite display team was killed yesterday when his plane crashed as he practiced acrobatic maneuvers, officials said. The pilot, who has not been named, was a member of the Red Checkers display team and was on a solo run in an Air Force CT4 Airtrainer when he crashed near the Ohakea Air Force base in the south of North Island. Prime Minister John Key described the accident as a tragedy.
■PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Forty dead in bus crash
Around 40 people have died after two buses crashed head-on in one of the nation’s worst ever road accidents, reports said yesterday. The buses were traveling at speeds above 100kph and swerving to avoid potholes when they hit each other in a remote area of the northeast. Most of the victims were killed instantly while others died before they could receive treatment, with eight people in intensive care.
■SOUTH KOREA
FMD case confirmed
Officials confirmed an additional outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) yesterday, one week after the country reported its first case in nearly eight years. Cows at a farm in Pocheon, just north of Seoul, tested positive for the disease early yesterday, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement. Quarantine workers plan to slaughter about 1,790 cows, pigs and deer within a 500m radius of the site of the outbreak, to prevent the spread of the disease, ministry official Kim Dae-gyun said. The site is about 3.5km away from another Pocheon farm where six cows were confirmed to have been infected with the disease last Thursday — South Korea’s first outbreak since May 2002, Kim said.
■THAILAND
Three killed in attacks
A series of drive-by shootings and bombings killed three people and wounded 17 in the restive Muslim south, police said yesterday. Unknown assailants shot dead and burned the bodies of a Buddhist couple who were riding to work on a motorcycle in the morning in Pattani Province, police said. A Buddhist family of three, including a 12-year-old girl, were wounded in another drive-by attack in the same province. On Wednesday, a group of government electricians were ambushed as they worked on electrical wiring along a road, also in Pattani. One was killed and four others wounded. A bomb was later detonated outside a tea shop in the same province, wounding four civilians, and in neighboring Yala a bomb exploded outside an open-air market, wounding three soldiers and three civilians.
■HONG KONG
Acid suspects detained
Police have arrested two suspects in connection with a recent acid attack in the densely populated financial hub. Police said in a statement late on Wednesday that the 18-year-old and 23-year-old men were allegedly linked to an acid attack in the Causeway Bay shopping district on Dec. 12, when corrosive liquid was tossed from a building, injuring six people. Police spokeswoman Michelle Mak said the two weren’t immediately charged and that the 18-year-old was freed on bail. She said it still wasn’t clear if the suspects were involved in other similar acid attacks. In the most recent attack on Saturday night, two bottles of acid were hurled from a building overlooking Temple Street in Kowloon peninsula, a popular tourist spot known for its outdoor market and snack stalls. At least 30 people were injured.
■UNITED STATES
US drops case against Gotti
US prosecutors announced on Wednesday an end to their long-running but futile case against John “Junior” Gotti, son of New York’s most famous modern gangster. “In light of the circumstances, the government has decided not to proceed with the prosecution against John A. Gotti,” Preet Bharara, US Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. The move marks a dramatic victory for Gotti. His last racketeering and murder trial ended on Dec. 1 when the jury failed to reach a verdict on any count. Prosecutors had been desperate to put away Gotti, who admits to a life in the Gambino family of the Mafia, but denies murder allegations.
■UNITED STATES
NYC’s ‘skinniest’ house sold
A town house dubbed New York City’s skinniest house has sold for US$2.1 million. The red 3m-by-12m brick building in Greenwich Village was built in 1873 on land used as an alley between homes. The two-bedroom, two-bath Bedford Street house was listed for sale last August at US$2.7 million. It last sold in 2000 for US$1.6 million. A plaque on the house notes poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived there, as did anthropologist Margaret Mead.
■UNITED STATES
Cabbie returns thousands
A Bangladeshi taxi driver in New York City said he returned a lost purse containing more than US$21,000 in cash and expensive jewelry because his mother always advised him to be honest. “I’m broke, but I’m honest,” 28-year-old Mohammad Asadujjaman said on Tuesday. Felicia Lettieri, of Pompeii, Italy, and six relatives had taken two cabs from midtown Manhattan to Penn Station on Christmas Eve. The 72-year-old Lettieri left her purse behind, with more than US$21,000, jewelry worth thousands more and some of the group’s passports. Asadujjaman called a friend with a car and drove about 80km to a Long Island address in the purse. No one was home, so he left his cellphone number and a note. His phone rang a short time later and he drove back to return the bag. Felicia Lettieri’s sister Francesca told Newsday that Asadujjaman had saved her family’s vacation, adding: “We really love what he did.” Asadujjaman is a full-time college student who began driving a cab a few days a week after his hours were cut back at a former factory job. He turned down a reward, saying he could not accept it as an observant Muslim.
■UNITED STATES
Singer Pendergrass dies
Teddy Pendergrass, who became R&B’s reigning sex symbol in the 1970s and 1980s with his forceful, masculine voice and passionate love ballads and later became an inspirational figure after suffering a car accident in 1982 that left him paralyzed, died on Wednesday at age 59 at Bryn Mawr Hospital in suburban Philadelphia. The singer’s son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said his father underwent colon cancer surgery eight months ago and had “a difficult recovery.”
■UNITED STATES
‘Mastermind’ charged
A woman suspected of being the mastermind behind a series of break-ins at the Hollywood homes of several celebrities has been charged with felony burglary and receiving stolen property. Rachel Lee, 19, was charged on Wednesday. She joins five other young men and women charged with the burglaries. Lee turned herself in on Wednesday afternoon and was released after posting US$150,000 bail. Lee and Nicholas Prugo, who faces seven counts of first-degree burglary, are accused of spearheading the burglaries.
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