■ SINGAPORE
Residents battle prostitution
Some residents have erected street lamps in the hope that brightly lit alleys will keep prostitutes at bay, a newspaper said yesterday. The Straits Times said residents of Geylang, which houses the city-state’s red-light district, were tired of prostitutes roaming streets in the area, and were “ring-fencing” their homes with lamps in a “turf war” against sex workers. Residents were also planning to throw parties and organize community events to “claim back territory”, it said. “You don’t have to be scared. Without the lights, you always have to look behind you,” the paper quoted a 70-year-old resident as saying. Prostitution is legal in Singapore but soliciting is not.
■ HONG KONG
Court convicts cabbie groper
A high-profile millionaire businessman was facing jail yesterday after being convicted of groping two male taxi drivers. Stephen Gan Fock-wai, known as the Prince of White Flower Oil for his company’s health food products, was found guilty on Friday of fondling the taxi drivers’ thighs and private parts as they drove him home. Gan, 46, was arrested after allegedly groping a 34-year-old taxi driver last year. Another driver, 37, came forward to complain of a similar assault in 2003 and said Gan offered him HK$2,000 (US$553) to have sex with him. Gan was found guilty of two indecent assaults. He denied the offenses. At a hearing on Friday, Gan’s lawyer Lawrence Lok said his client was a closet bisexual and the incidents were a result of “suppressed lust.”
■ EAST TIMOR
Quake sends people running
An undersea earthquake rocked the capital yesterday, shaking buildings and sending screaming residents running out to the streets. There were no reports of injuries or damage from the quake, officials said. The US Geological Survey put the tremor at magnitude 6.0, while the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysics Agency registered a more powerful 6.4. The agencies said it struck 88km north of Dili at a depth of 11km. “The tremor was very strong and shook everything in my house,” said Ruben Ximenes, a technician for the UN. “All I could do was run away.”
■ BANGLADESH
Bus crash kills 18
A speeding bus lost control and plunged off the road yesterday, killing at least 18 people and injuring dozens, a police official said. Rescuers recovered 16 bodies from the ruins of after the accident in Tangail district, 80km north of Dhaka, local police chief Abdul Mannan said. Another two people died from injuries at the hospital, he said. Mannan said another 46 people were being treated in hospitals for injuries, five of them in serious condition. The bus was packed with day laborers traveling from the northern district of Kurigram.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Moonies get new leader
The 28-year-old son of Unification Church founder Sun Myung-moon has succeeded his father as the religious sect’s top leader, a church spokesperson said yesterday. Reverend Hyung Jin-moon on Friday became the chairman of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, taking charge of the Church’s world and domestic organizations. “I hope everyone helps him so that he may fulfil his duty as the successor of the True Parents,” the 88-year-old founder said at an inauguration ceremony in Gapyeong, 40km east of Seoul. The Unification Church evangelizes in some 200 countries. The Church, one of the world’s most controversial religious organizations, was founded in Seoul in 1954.
■ UNITED STATES
Treasure won't remain secret
A federal judge has denied a bid by Florida deep-sea explorers to keep secret the details of a 19th-century shipwreck that has yielded US$500 million in treasure, a ruling the Spanish government applauded on Friday. Judge Mark Pizzo threw out Odyssey Marine Exploration’s request on Thursday to keep information including the identity of the ship sealed as the company argues with Spain over ownership of the 17 tonnes of silver coins and other artifacts retrieved last year. The company followed with a news release announcing that the shipwreck was likely the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes y las Animas, a Spanish galleon that sank in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Portugal in 1804.
■ RUSSIA
Pastor asks for mercy
An American pastor charged with illegally bringing hunting ammunition into Russia has asked a Moscow court for mercy. Fifty-two-year-old Phillip Miles of South Carolina has been in a Russian jail since his arrest on Feb. 3. Airport officials found a box of hunting ammunition in his luggage. He said it was a gift for a friend. Miles apologized to the court on Friday and recounted his humanitarian work in Russia, a country he often visits.
■ UNITED STATES
CNN's Quest arrested
A New York judge ordered CNN reporter Richard Quest to undergo six months of counseling on Friday after Quest was arrested in Central Park for possession of a controlled substance, his lawyer said. The British reporter is known for his boisterous and quirky style, especially on CNN International. He was arrested at 3:40am on Friday in New York’s Central Park for being in the park after a 1am curfew. Police discovered a plastic bag containing what was believed to be methamphetamine in his pocket, police spokesman John Grimphel said. Quest, 46, later appeared before State Court Judge Anthony Ferrara, who told him the case would be dismissed if he attends counseling, Quest’s lawyer, Alan Abramson said. “Mr. Quest did not realize that the park had a curfew and was returning to his hotel with friends. The matter is scheduled to be dismissed,” Abramson said. Quest is a business news reporter on CNN International and hosts CNN Business Traveler as well as his own feature program, Quest.
■ ITALY
Man sentenced for staring
An Italian man was given a suspended jail sentence for staring too intensely at a woman sitting in front of him on a train. A judge sentenced the man in his 30s, whose name was not revealed, to 10 days in prison and a 40 euros (US$63) fine after a 55-year-old woman filed a complaint for sexual harrassment. The two met on two separate occasions in 2005 on a commuter train going from Lecco, a town in northern Italy, to Milan. The first time, the man sat next to the woman but she felt he had moved too close for comfort. The next day, the man sat in front of the same woman and according to her complaint, stared at her for the whole journey. The two did not speak.
■ MEXICO
Army helicopter crashes
An army helicopter crashed during anti-narcotics operations on Friday, killing 11 soldiers, local authorities said. The helicopter went down at around midday in a rural area in Michoacan State, a major front in the government’s army-led war against drug cartels, the state attorney general’s office said, without giving the cause of the crash.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
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