PAPUA NEW GUINEA
PM’s son to be indicted
Police yesterday were preparing to charge the son of Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal with murder after the body of a 29-year-old waitress was found at the family home. Theo Abal, 21, is to make his first court appearance today, when he is to be indicted on murder charges in the killing of the woman, police spokesman Dominic Kakas said. A guard at the house told police he saw Theo Abal and the woman arrive home in the early hours of Monday. Police said that the guard later heard the woman scream and that Abal confessed to killing her.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Malaysian ‘assassinated’
Police yesterday vowed to track down the killers of a Malaysian businessman, who they said was “assassinated.” Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Fred Yakasa said the man was shot dead while driving in the capital, Port Moresby, on Wednesday. “We have reason to believe that this was an assassination due to the manner in which the shooting was carried out,” Yakasa said in a statement. The victim had lived and worked in the country for more than 20 years. Yakasa said he had reason to believe the killing was carried out by foreigners linked to “organized crime,” but added that police do not have “the evidence to prove this at this point in time.”
MALAYSIA
Couple charged with murder
A couple has been charged with the murder of the family’s 26-year-old Indonesian maid, a lawyer said yesterday, in the latest case of alleged abuse against foreign workers. Indonesia recently promised to lift a 2009 ban on sending maids after the two countries inked a new deal for better working conditions to curb abuse and torture. Lawyer Guok Ngek Seong said Fong Kong Meng, 55, and his wife, Teoh Ching Yen, 53, were charged on Wednesday in a magistrate’s court with killing their maid, Isti Komariyah. Guok, who is representing Fong, said Isti had worked for the couple since July last year.
AUSTRALIA
Gay marriage on PM’s menu
Gay and lesbian couples will try to change Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s opposition to same-sex marriage when they dine at her official residence after activists won a charity auction to attend a private dinner party. Gillard had offered to host the dinner for any six guests at her official address in Canberra at an auction during the National Press Gallery’s annual charity ball on Wednesday night. The highest bidder was the activist group GetUP!, which offered A$31,000 (US$33,000) for the table. GetUp! spokesman Paul Mackay said yesterday that he hoped the dinner would sway the prime minister and lead the Labor Party to change its policy on gay marriage.
AFGHANISTAN
‘39’ becomes mark of shame
The nation’s booming car industry has been thrown into chaos by a growing aversion to the number “39,” which almost overnight has become an unlikely synonym for “pimp” and a mark of shame. Drivers of cars with number plates containing 39 are mocked and taunted across Kabul. “Now even little kids say: ‘Look, there goes the 39.’ This car is a bad luck, I can’t take my family out in it,” Mohammad Ashraf said. Other “39” owners flew into a rage or refused to speak when asked whether their car was a burden. No one is quite sure why the number became so contaminated so fast, but Kabul gossip blames a pimp in neighboring Iran. His flashy car had a 39 in its number plate, the story goes, so he was nicknamed “39” and the tag spread.
UNITED KINGDOM
Library hosts space talk
“You want to know about spaceships?” the voice on the phone says. “Well, one day Bootsy [Collins] and I were in a car. It was 11 in the morning, broad daylight, and we were only a few miles from home. Suddenly a beam of light from a UFO hit us and we couldn’t see a thing. It felt like only a few moments later when I got to my house, but my daughter said it was late and she was ready for bed. I’m telling you, time disappeared on that journey. We were taken to a weird place!” This Saturday, the British Library is hosting a sold-out talk by legendary cosmic funkster George Clinton about his lifelong obsession with space. He says: “We’re all looking to the stars. The Dogon from Mali say they’ve had contact with extraterrestrials from Sirius and I can see that. I truly believe our planet was seeded and now we’re getting ready to seed other planets.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Joss Stone plot thwarted
Police said on Wednesday they had arrested two men near the home of soul singer Joss Stone on suspicion of conspiracy to murder and rob. Officers detained the men, aged 30 and 33, in Cullompton, southwest England, at 10am on Tuesday near her isolated country home and reportedly found them in possession of swords, rope and a body bag. They also had detailed maps and aerial photos of the 24-year-old British singer’s property, the Sun newspaper reported. The arrests came after neighbors spotted two men driving slowly round remote country lanes in Cullompton and reported them to police, the paper said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Penelope puppet for sale
She was an aristocrat, a secret agent and, frankly, the subject of many a schoolboy crush in the late 1960s and 1970s. Now a Lady Penelope puppet from the Thunderbirds TV series is to be sold at auction, and is expected to fetch up to £10,000 (US$16,100). The marionette was one of the standout characters in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s adventure series. Since the mid-1960s, the 50cm puppet, which has a head full of electronics allowing the mouth to move, had been in the care of her maker, Christine Glanville, who died in 1999.
IRAN
Necklaces banned
Men have been banned from wearing necklaces in the latest crackdown by the Islamic regime on “un-Islamic” clothing and haircuts. Thousands of special forces have been deployed in Tehran’s streets, participating in the regime’s “moral security plan” in which loose-fitting headscarves, tight overcoats and shortened trousers that expose skin will not be tolerated for women, while men are warned against glamorous hairstyles and wearing a necklace. Last summer authorities in Tehran also released a list of approved hairstyles in an attempt to offer Islamic substitutes to “decadent” Western cuts, such as the ponytail and the mullet.
CANADA
Man arrested for house theft
Police on Wednesday charged a man in central Ontario with stealing a house. The owner arrived home to find his 10-year-old mobile home in the community of Dundalk, northwest of Toronto, was missing. He alerted police who located the “45-foot [13.7m], double-wide” prefabricated building worth an estimated C$30,000 (US$30,500) on a rural property “a relatively short distance from where it was taken,” police said.
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