■ Tonga
King's son dies
The South Pacific kingdom of Tonga was plunged into mourning yesterday after the death of one of the king's sons, government-owned Radio Tonga said. Noble Maatu, 48, the second son of King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, was reported to have collapsed and died of a heart attack in the capital, Nuku'alofa, on Tuesday. Maatu was a controversial figure in the conservative and traditional kingdom. Born second-in-line to the throne, Maatu was stripped of his princely title by his father after he left the kingdom to marry a commoner in Hawaii. Maatu and his heirs also lost all right to succeed to the Tongan throne. After his first wife's death he returned to Tonga where Tupou IV bestowed a noble title on him, but did not restore his royal rights.
■ Hong Kong
FBI agent forgets bullets
An FBI agent was arrested for allegedly carrying ammunition without a licence on his way to transit at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport from New York to Bangkok, police confirmed yesterday. During routine security checks, the 39-year-old man was allegedly found to be carrying a loaded pistol magazine with 15 bullets in his bag. He was released by police and given a verbal warning yesterday. It is understood that the agent was on his holiday and that he forgot that he left the bullets in his bag, the local newspaper Ming Pao reported.
■ Thailand
Bar closed under new law
A bar featuring sado-masochistic role playing and women in school uniforms became the first Bangkok entertainment venue to be closed under new "social order" legislation, news reports said yesterday. Deputy Interior Minister Pracha Maleenond personally led police on the raid early Tuesday on The Cave bar in the heart of the Sukhumvit Road tourist belt. "The bar will be closed for 90 days as punishment for allowing lewd acts to be performed within its premises," The Nation newspaper quoted Pracha as saying. The police raid shortly after midnight interrupted a sadistic show in which caged women invited guests to whip them or pour melted candle wax over their bodies.
■ China
Movie fans ring wrong man
A Beijing mobile phone owner has been swamped with calls after his number was shown on screen as being that of the leading man in a hit romantic movie, a news report said yesterday. Producers inadvertently showed a real number in the box office smash A City Without Heroes which stars pop singer Lin Yilun, according to the South China Morning Post. Since the movie began screening, an infuriated phone owner has been deluged with calls from young girls asking to speak to their hero. He has complained to the film makers, the newspaper said.
■ Australia
Love and a crossbow
A lovesick schoolboy who fired a bolt from a crossbow through his former girlfriend's chest before throwing a petrol bomb at her was found not guilty of attempted murder by a court in Australia yesterday. The 17-year-old was instead found guilty of malicious wounding over the April 2002 incident in a school playground in the New South Wales town of Port Stephens. The boy was tackled by fellow pupils as he lit a second petrol bomb and prepared to throw it. Both incendiary devices failed to ignite. The bolt lodged in the legs of another schoolgirl, pinning them together, after passing through the body of the ex-girlfriend. Both victims have recovered. The schoolboy will be sentenced later.
■ United States
Bishop guilty of hit-and-run
Bishop Thomas O'Brien was convicted on hit-and-run charges for leaving the scene after killing a jaywalker with his car, a crash that ended his career as head of the Roman Catholic diocese in Phoenix. O'Brien is believed to be the first Roman Catholic bishop in US history to be convicted of a felony. The 68-year-old bishop, who said he thought he hit a dog or was struck by a rock, could be sentenced to anywhere from probation to almost four years in prison on the charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. No sentencing date has been set.
■ South Africa
Lion-feeding case shocks
A white South African farmer and three black laborers accused of feeding a man to a lion appeared in court on Tuesday, in a case that has stirred racial tensions just weeks before a general election. Mark Scott-Crossley and two workmen have been charged with murder after allegedly beating a sacked employee and tossing him into an enclosure at a breeding project for rare white lions. It is unclear if he was alive when he was thrown over the fence. The case has shocked South Africa ahead of April elections that mark a decade since the end of racist apartheid white rule, with some people seeing race as a major element.
■ United States
Shuttle mission next year
It could be January or March of next year before NASA is ready to launch its first space shuttle mission since Columbia disintegrated in the sky above Texas in February last year, a top NASA administrator said on Tuesday. NASA has been targeting a launch date in September or October, but that looks unlikely because of ongoing research into air flow around the shuttle's huge external fuel tank, said NASA shuttle and space station director Michael Kostelnik. Because of flight restrictions now in place, Kostelnik said the January slot would give NASA only a few days to launch, which may be too brief to complete final preparations.
■ United States
No stopping gay weddings
A California judge on Tuesday gave the city of San Francisco a green light to keep on issuing marriage licenses to gays and lesbians until late March at least. Conservative family groups had asked two courts to halt the flood of City Hall weddings that have made San Francisco "Ground Zero" for the controversial gay marriage movement. One court put off its hearing in the case until Friday but the judge in the second case, California Superior Court Judge James Warren, refused to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the practice started last Thursday. Warren said no immediate threat to society existed that warranted putting a stop to the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses.
■ United States
Coke-penis story falls flat
A US Air Force captain who tried to blame a positive drug test on her ex-husband's use of cocaine on his penis during sex has been dismissed from the service after pleading guilty to snorting the drug herself. Jacqueline Chester planned a legal defense that the only way the cocaine could have entered her system was during intercourse with her ex-husband, who supposedly applied cocaine to the tip of his penis to prolong his sexual pleasure without her knowledge, her lawyer, Charles Gittins, told Air Force Times.
■ United States
Terrorist begs for life
A convicted conspirator
in the 1995 bombing of
an Oklahoma City federal building has offered to plead no contest to state murder charges if prosecutors drop their attempt to seek the death penalty, according
to a motion filed in the case. State prosecutors indicated in a statement they have
no plans to accept Terry Nichols' offer Tuesday, similar to at least one other offer the defense has made. Nichols, 48, was convicted
on federal charges for
the deaths of eight law enforcement officers in
the April 19, 1995, bombing, which killed 168 people.
He was sentenced to life
in prison. The state charges are for the deaths of the other 160 victims and one victim's unborn child.
■ Ecuador
Indians battle riot police
Riot police clashed with impoverished Indians in their isolated central Andean region, leaving at least 17 people injured in the second day of demonstrations against the government's economic austerity program. Ecuador's Confederation of Indian Nations called a halt to the indefinite protest in order to "regroup" following the violence. In a communique, however, the organization called for President Lucio Gutierrez's resignation and said it would support any decision by smaller affiliated Indian groups to continue demonstrating. The campaign against Gutierrez's policies began on Monday in the central highlands, where most of Ecuador's 4 million Indians live. Indians account for about one-third of Ecuador's population.
■ The Netherlands
Asylum seekers expelled
The Dutch parliament on Tuesday approved a measure to expel 26,000 people
who unsuccessfully sought political asylum, despite objections from left-leaning political parties and human rights groups. Immigration Service spokesman Martin Bruinsma said the vote had gone along party lines, with the conservative government and several smaller right-wing parties providing a "large majority" in favor of the measure. Most of the deportees came to the Netherlands between 1999 and 2001. They were refused political asylum and have exhausted all appeals.
■ United Kingdom
Henry VIII played football
Not content with having
six wives and splitting his country's church from the Vatican, King Henry VIII of England also found time
for a more modest pursuit, according to historians -- football. A recently uncovered purchase list for the 16th-century monarch contained an order for 10 pairs of leather boots, 45 pairs of velvet shoes and "one pair of sotular [an old word meaning footwear] for football," the Times reported yesterday. The boots cost the equivalent of US$182 in modern money, a huge sum for the time.
■ Mexico
Former president dies
Jose Lopez Portillo, who served as Mexico's president from 1976 to 1982, died Tuesday, family members and medical officials announced. He was 83. Lopez Portillo died at Angeles del Pedregal Hospital in Mexico City, where he was being treated for pneumonia. Sworn into office while Mexico was wallowing in its worst economic recession since World War II, Lopez Portillo seized on an oil boom
to prop up the country's economy. He promised to bring prosperity for all, and did for a while. Unparalleled prosperity was followed, however, by such a huge bust that the economy ended up worse off than it was before.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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