MALAYSIA
Death sentence for murders
A court yesterday sentenced a fishmonger to death for killing two British medical students last year in Sarawak state on Borneo. Prosecutor Muhamad Iskandar Ahmad said the high court found Zulkipli Abdullah, 23, guilty of stabbing to death Aidan Brunger and Neil Gareth Dalton, both 22, in August last year. Muhamad Iskandar said. Zulkipli faces death by hanging.
CHINA
‘Illegal’ golf courses shut
The Ministry of Land and Resources has closed down almost 70 “illegal” golf courses, in what appears to be the first sign of enforcement of a decade-old ban. The statement did not give a time period for the closures. The government ordered a nationwide moratorium on new courses in 2004, but the ban was widely ignored.
JAPAN
Would-be robber breaks leg
A hapless armed robber in his 60s broke his leg while holding up a convenience store and then used the shop’s payphone to call an ambulance, according to a newspaper report and police. The thief tussled with a 35-year-old store clerk after threatening him with a knife in Chiba on Sunday. The robber was disarmed in the struggle, which saw him fall to the ground and break his leg before hobbling out of the shop, the China Nippo reported. In increasing pain and unable to get very far, the man limped back an hour later and used the payphone at the store to summon an ambulance, the paper said. Detectives are planning to arrest the suspect when he is released from hospital, the paper reported.
CHINA
‘Solar Impulse 2’ arrives
A solar-powered plane arrived in Chongqing from Myanmar at 1:35am yesterday as part of a historic round-the-world journey promoting renewable energy use. Two Swiss pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, are flying the Solar Impulse 2, which is powered by more than 17,000 solar cells on its wings. The flight took more than 20 hours. The plane’s next stop is Nanjing.
JAPAN
Council backs ‘partnerships’
A Tokyo council yesterday voted to issue “partnership” certificates to gay couples, the first such recognition of same-sex unions in the nation. Assembly members in Shibuya district passed an ordinance that will allow their officials to start giving out the certificate as early as this summer. The certificate will carry only symbolic significance, since the nation’s constitution identifies marriage as a union based on mutual consent of the parties from “both sexes.” Shibuya officials say they will encourage hospitals and landlords to accept the certificate to try to ensure same-sex couples receive similar treatment to people who are married.
CHINA
Beijing blamed for attacks
Authorities have taken over computers both inside and outside the country to launch cyberattacks against the Web site of a local anti-online censorship group and San Francisco-based Github that hosts some of the group’s data, according to an analysis released by the group. Greatfire.org on Monday said that denial-of-service attacks that have intermittently shut down Github over the past week. It said the attacks were carried out by installing malicious code on the computers of users visiting Baidu and related sites and using those computers to overwhelm Github and Greatfire.org Web sites with service requests.
UNITED STATES
S African to replace Stewart
South African comedian Trevor Noah will host iconic US late-night news satire The Daily Show, whose anchor Jon Stewart announced last month he would step down, the program said on Monday. The 31-year-old is relatively unknown in the country — he has appeared a handful of times as the show’s “senior international correspondent” — but has a big following online and in his homeland. The widely acclaimed Comedy Central program has been led by Stewart for the past 16 years, and become an influential source of news and views for a younger audience that those tuning into straight news broadcasting. In mid-February, Stewart announced he would leave the program.
GERMANY
Co-pilot had been suicidal
The co-pilot believed to have deliberately crashed a Germanwings plane into the French Alps was classified as suicidal “several years ago,” but had appeared more stable of late, prosecutors said. The first officer, Andreas Lubitz, was receiving treatment from neurologists and psychiatrists who had signed him off sick from work a number of times. However, doctors had recently found no sign he intended to hurt himself or others, said Ralf Herrenbrueck, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Duesseldorf, on Monday. Herrenbrueck criticized conjecture about Lubitz’s alleged motives and said authorities would not take part in “speculation.” Herrenbrueck said there was still no indication that he had told anyone of his plans or left behind a suicide note.
FRANCE
Senate scraps soliciting law
The upper house of parliament yesterday scrapped a law punishing clients of prostitutes and made soliciting an offense, as the country wrestles with how to legislate the world’s oldest profession. The legislation must still be approved by the lower house, but has already drawn fierce opposition from sex workers, who said it would drive prostitution further underground and make them vulnerable to abuse. Hundreds of prostitutes — many South American and Chinese — took to the streets of Paris on Saturday to protest against the proposed law.
UNITED STATES
Sex ratio explained
Boys and girls are equal in number at conception, but more female fetuses die during pregnancy, leading to a slightly higher number of males being born, researchers said on Monday. The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is based on the largest dataset ever analyzed in the search to explain what is known as the human sex ratio, which has been poorly understood until now. Scientists found that the human sex ratio is equal at conception, but that during gestation, there were certain times when male embryos were more likely to die than females, particularly in the first week after conception when there tended to be more abnormal male embryos than female embryos. During the next 10 to 15 weeks, females faced a higher risk of mortality in the womb.
UNITED STATES
Obama to visit Kenya
President Barack Obama will make a long-awaited return to Kenya in July, visiting his father’s homeland for the first time since becoming US president, the White House announced on Monday. During the much-delayed visit, Obama will attend a summit to encourage entrepreneurship and meet controversial Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. Obama’s father was from a small village near the shores of Lake Victoria. He met Obama’s American mother in Hawaii, where they had a son before divorcing.
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