■THAILAND
Upheaval at Oriental Hotel
The end of an era is coming for Bangkok’s famed Oriental hotel. Kurt Wachtveitl, the general manager for more than four decades, said on Tuesday night that he would retire in May. The 72-year-old Wachtveitl is credited with transforming the riverside hotel that was built in 1876 into one of Asia’s leading hotels. “I decided tonight to retire,’’ he told diners at the hotel’s Le Normandie restaurant. Wachtveitl joined the hotel in 1967.
■JAPAN
Hong Kong stars arrested
Pop stars Kelvin Kwan (關楚耀) and Jill Vidal (衛詩) have been arrested for possessing cannabis on a visit to Tokyo, a news report said yesterday. Kwan, 25, and Vidal, 26, were arrested in the Dogenzaka shopping center in Shibuya on Feb. 24 when shopkeepers reported a man trying to steal goods, the South China Morning Post said. A police search found cannabis in a packet of cigarettes Kwan had, the paper said. The pair face a maximum penalty of being barred from Japan and five years’ prison.
■HONG KONG
Cop family in trouble again
A policeman convicted of mugging a woman is the third officer in his family to be arrested, a news report said yesterday. Senior constable Leung Wai-hung (梁偉雄), 44, pleaded guilty to theft after grabbing a 53-year-old woman’s handbag and punching and kicking her as she lay on the ground in July. Leung, who committed the robbery because of heavy gambling debts, appeared on Tuesday in court and will be sentenced on March 18, the South China Morning Post reported. Leung’s father, a former sergeant, was charged with the shooting death of his chief inspector in 1994 but acquitted. His younger brother was jailed for six years in 2002 after being convicted of abducting a child for a US$1.9 million ransom.
■AUSTRALIA
Stranded whale rescued
Rescuers slung a stranded pilot whale between two jet skies and returned it to open sea yesterday, three days after it ran aground with a pod of almost 200 whales and dolphins. The animals became stranded on Sunday evening on Tasmania state’s King Island. Volunteers helped wildlife experts refloat 53 surviving whales and five dolphins on Monday. Wild seas prevented a second rescue attempt of the last survivor until yesterday.
■MALAYSIA
Man killed in police custody
An autopsy revealed that an ethnic Indian man was tortured and beaten to death in police custody, a lawyer for his family said yesterday. Ananthan Kugan died on Jan. 20 after six days in detention. Kugan was arrested on suspicion of being a car thief. A government autopsy found he died from liquid in his lungs, but a second one commissioned by Kugan’s family found he died from kidney failure following a severe beating, lawyer N. Surendran said. Kugan’s back was burned with marks likely from a hot iron, Surendran said. Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail has said the case was classified as a murder and police were investigating.
■CHINA
No more wining and dining
Visiting heads of state will no longer be wined and dined with sumptuous banquets, cutting back the fare to just one soup, three dishes and no liquor. The scaled-down menu comes as the government encourages thriftiness in the face of the global financial crisis, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Arrest in Manchester robbery
A man was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of threatening at knifepoint the fiancee of Darren Fletcher, the Manchester United midfielder, and burgling the soccer player’s house. Hayley Grice was forced to take off her engagement ring, while Fletcher’s mother was forced to hand over watches and jewelry in a raid that took place on Feb. 23, just hours after the player had flown out with the United squad for a Champions League match in Milan.
■SWEDEN
Obesity likened to smoking
Likening obesity’s risks to those of smoking, a study spanning decades found that young men who were overweight at age 18 were as likely to die by 60 as light smokers, while obese teens, like heavy smokers, were at double the risk of dying early. While obesity is linked to a slew of health problems, the new findings fly in the face of numerous studies showing that people who are merely overweight may not be at higher risk of premature death than those of normal weight. The new study, published in this week’s British Medical Journal, tracked the death rates of 45,920 men over 38 years.
■SPAIN
PM makes naughty slip-up
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Tuesday inadvertently used foul language while expounding on a tourism agreement with Moscow at a press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. “There is a big increase in the number of Spanish tourists heading to Russia, the number is at 500,000. We have therefore decided to sign an agreement to stimulate, to favor, to fuck,” he said, pausing briefly, “to support this tourism.” In Spanish, para follar, meaning “to fuck,” sounds similar to para apoyar, meaning “to support.”
■ITALY
Texting targeted during Lent
Priests looking for something other than cigarettes and chocolate to ban during Lent have stumbled upon a more serious addiction: mobile phone texting. Italians send an average of 50 texts each a month. Priests up and down the country are asking churchgoers to quit during Lent after a drive was launched by the Catholic Missionary Center in Modena and backed by the city’s archbishop. In Trento, worshippers have been instructed to share the suffering of Jesus during his 40 days in the wilderness by switching off their MP3 players and doing without Facebook. The drive drew a mixed reaction. “Good Friday expresses the pain of Christ and to suggest that a texting strike is the way to commemorate this is ridiculous,” said Gianni Gennari, a journalist at Avvenire, a newspaper affiliated with the Church. “Priests should ask worshippers to skip a cup of coffee and donate the money saved to the poor.”
■AUSTRIA
German politician charged
A German politician involved in a fatal collision with a fellow skier was convicted on Tuesday of negligent homicide. Dieter Althaus, a German state governor, did not attend Tuesday’s trial because he is still recovering from head injuries sustained in the Jan. 1 collision at the Riesneralm ski area. The accident sparked a debate over whether to enact legislation requiring skiers and snowboarders to wear protective head gear. Althaus was wearing a helmet; the woman who died was not. Prosecutors said Althaus told them he has no memory of the accident but takes responsibility for the 41-year-old woman’s death.
■UNITED STATES
Two indicted in beating
The two men accused of fatally beating an Ecuadorean immigrant with a bat and a bottle after shouting epithets about Hispanics and gays face 78 years to life in prison if convicted on charges handed up by a Brooklyn grand jury and unsealed on Tuesday. The two suspects, Keith Phoenix, 28, and Hakim Scott, 25, are charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and assault, all as hate crimes, for the Dec. 7 attack on the immigrant, Jose Sucuzhanay, and his brother, Romel, who survived. At a news conference in Brooklyn announcing the charges, Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes said that if the men were convicted, his office would push for the sentences to run consecutively.
■UNITED STATES
No McNuggets? Call police
Authorities said a Florida woman called emergency dispatchers three times after McDonald’s employees told her they were out of Chicken McNuggets. A police report said 27-year-old Fort Pierce resident Latreasa Goodman told authorities she paid for a 10-piece serving last week, but was later informed the restaurant had run out, the Stuart News reported. She said employees refused to give her a refund, saying all sales were final. A cashier told police she offered Goodman a larger portion of different food for the same price, but Goodman became irate.
■UNITED STATES
Odd fish caught — shotgun
A fisherman in Arkansas started to reel in what he thought was a turtle, only to find a Remington 870 shotgun snagged on the end of the line. The two men took the shotgun to a Jonesboro police station, where the gun has been taken as evidence, Detective Sergeant Todd Nelson told Jonesboro TV station KAIT. Its serial number will be checked to see if it has been reported stolen or involved in any crimes. Nelson offered a lighthearted observation, saying it may have been thrown into the lake by “somebody that’s mad at a spouse about hunting too much.”
■UNITED STATES
Warrant issued in Levy case
Officials issued an arrest warrant on Tuesday in connection with the murder of a government intern eight years ago, which triggered a political scandal when a congressman admitted to having an affair with her. Prosecutors named Ingmar Guandique, 27, of El Salvador as the suspected killer of 24-year-old Chandra Levy, whose romantic links to former congressman Gary Condit initially fueled suspicion he was involved in her disappearance. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said authorities believed Levy had been a “random victim” of Guandique’s. She went missing while jogging in a Washington park on May 1, 2001. Guandique was already in prison for attacking two joggers in the same park where Levy’s remains were found.
■MEXICO
Cabinet official resigns
A top Cabinet official resigned on Tuesday after someone threatened to ruin his career by leaking secretly recorded conversations. Transportation and Communications Secretary Luis Tellez did not say why he was stepping down. But he quit two weeks after news media reported the contents of a conversation recorded in 2006 in which Tellez alleged that former president Carlos Salinas stole from a secret government fund. Tellez, whose responsibilities included airline and telecommunications regulation, told federal officials he had received a letter threatening to reveal other recordings and urging him to “resign before your life is converted into a scandal,” his office said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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