■MALAYSIA
Iranian smuggler in a pickle
An Iranian man was arrested after trying to smuggle 5.7 million ringgit (US$1.61 million) in drugs disguised as pickled cucumbers, it was reported yesterday. Customs deputy director general Mohammad Hassim Pardi told state media the Iranian was detained with liquid methamphetamine at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport on Friday after arriving on a flight from the Middle East. He said inspectors became suspicious after inspecting one of two bags the man was carrying, which contained five cans labeled as pickled cucumbers. However, no cucumbers could be seen when the luggage was screened. Mohammad Hasim told the news agency Bernama it was the first time that customs officials had detected and foiled an attempt to smuggle liquid methamphetamine in the country.
PHOTO: AP
■MALAYSIA
Council opposes caning
The country’s bar council said yesterday it was opposed to a judge’s plan to cane an offender in his court, saying he could not be both “judge and executioner.” Sessions court Judge Zainal Abdidin Kamarudin said on Friday he planned to cane 20-year-old sales promoter Syafiq Abdul Wahab in his courtroom on July 15, after he found him guilty of gang robbery. Zainal also ordered Syafiq’s parents to be present in the courtroom where he would mete out the punishment of 10 strokes of the cane, known locally as the rotan. Law society president Ragunath Kesavan said judges could legally inflict corporal punishment, but added that this had last been done over 30 years ago, with the high court swiftly reprimanding the judge for doing so.
■THAILAND
Teacher shot on road
A female Buddhist teacher was shot dead by suspected insurgents in the restive Muslim south yesterday, police said. Two gunmen riding a motorcycle fled after killing the 38-year-old victim on a road in Narathiwat Province. In an incident in the south on Saturday, a suspected insurgent and two security officers died in a gun battle in the province of Yala. Two other militants managed to get away, even though the house they escaped to was surrounded by 200 police and soldiers.
■HONG KONG
Teens sell sex for clothes
An increasing number of teenagers are selling sex to earn money for designer clothes, in a trend called “compensated dating,” a survey released yesterday indicated. One in 10 students questioned said they believed schoolgirls were involved in the practice and 6.6 percent said they knew fellow students who had done it. The trend for compensated dating, a euphemism for paid sex with young women usually by older men, is believed to have spread to Hong Kong from Japan.
■PAKISTAN
Aircraft bomb Taliban
Aircraft bombed the Taliban yesterday in their bastion of South Waziristan on the Afghan border after the militants attacked two military camps, killing two soldiers, officials and residents said. The military, near the end of an offensive in the northwestern Swat Valley after two months of fighting, is preparing to launch a new drive in South Waziristan, where Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud is based. The decision to go on the attack came after Taliban gains raised fears of the militants gradually taking over more of the country and even posing a risk to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The campaign has broad public support and has also won the praise of the US.
■ISRAEL
Groups oppose car park
At least 40 people were arrested in clashes with police on Saturday in Jerusalem during demonstrations by ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups against the opening of a car park on the Sabbath. One demonstrator was seriously injured when he fell from a fence, media reported. Four police officers suffered minor injuries. Police were pelted with bottles, stones, rotten fruit and dirty diapers, and trash containers were set ablaze. Police responded with water cannons in an attempt to disperse the demonstrators. Thousands of less religious people protested for the car park to be opened and police were able to keep the two sides apart through a massive show of force.
■ISRAEL
Peres visits Central Asia
President Shimon Peres yesterday was to begin a landmark visit to the former Soviet states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan aimed at advancing strategic and economic ties, his office said. During his four-day state visit to the two predominantly Muslim states, Peres will hold talks with Azeri and Kazakh leaders. He also plans to address hundreds of representatives from Muslim and Arab countries at an interfaith conference in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. The 85-year-old president will travel with a delegation of more than 60 representatives of government ministries and private companies seeking to tighten trade and economic ties with the two central Asian states.
■GERMANY
‘Romans’ struck by lightning
A bolt of lightning struck a re-enactment of Roman times on Saturday, injuring 13 people. Thousands of people from Germany and the Netherlands had gathered amid the excavated ruins of the Roman town of Colonia Ulpia Traiana on the lower Rhine to see 400 performers act roles as Roman soldiers, gladiators and tradesmen. Members of the public took shelter under trees in the archaeological park, outside the modern town of Xanten, when a thunderstorm began. The lightning bolt hit between two trees. Police said four victims suffered serious burns, including a 13-year-old girl who needed resuscitation. Others suffered shock.
■ITALY
Pope has translation issues
Translation problems have delayed the long-awaited publication of a new encyclical from the Pope, Italian media reported on Saturday. A ruling from the Vatican of Catholic teaching on Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) is expected before the G8 summit next month, and has been in preparation for some two years. Pope Benedict XVI has indicated he wants the encyclical to encompass the current economic crisis. But La Repubblica said problems have emerged translating the text. Although English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Chinese have not posed a problem, finding Latin equivalents for “market value” and “tax haven” have proved difficult, the paper reported.
■UKRAINE
Party pressures president
The party of President Viktor Yushchenko called on Saturday on its deputies to quit the pro-Western government coalition of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Interfax news agency reported. Relations have been strained between the two leaders, who will likely face one another in the presidential election set for January, and some lawmakers estimated the move could lead to the total collapse of the ruling coalition. “We are ordering deputies to remove their signature from the declaration on the creation of the coalition,” read a resolution adopted at a congress of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party.
■UNITED STATES
Under-bite helps dog win title
A prominent under-bite, scrunched face and floppy ears are the hallmarks of a winner. The winner of the World’s Ugliest Dog contest, that is. Pabst, a boxer-mix rescued from a shelter by Miles Egstad of Citrus Heights, California, won the annual contest on Friday at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Northern California. Pabst’s owner took home US$1,600 in prize money, pet supplies and a modeling contract with House of Dog.
■ARGENTINA
Soldiers face torture charges
Some 70 Argentine soldiers are to be charged in 80 cases of torture committed by the country’s army on its own ranks during the Falklands War against Britain, a prosecutor said on Saturday. A federal appeals court in the of Comodoro Rivadavia upheld a decision by a trial court that the alleged torture are considered crimes against humanity and can therefore not be denied, the source said. “We have been fighting for 27 years for this to become known, we are really satisfied,” said Eduardo Alonso, president of the Center for Falkland Islands Veterans at La Plata, 60km south of the capital Buenos Aires. “Next week, more soldiers will report about abuses they have suffered.” He cited several types of torture, including simulated executions and death by starvation.
■UNITED STATES
New satellite heads to orbit
A sophisticated new weather satellite is on its way to orbit. An unmanned rocket carrying the nation’s latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Saturday. The satellite is headed to a 35,400km high orbit where it will undergo six months of testing. It will circle Earth as a spare and be called into service when needed. The GOES satellite network tracks hurricanes and tornadoes, and monitors solar flares. NASA manages the development and launch of GOES satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The one launched on Saturday, GOES O, will be renamed GOES 14 once it reaches its proper orbit in a week-and-a-half.
■UNITED STATES
Substance kills gulls
Hundreds of gulls were killed or maimed in Cleveland after what investigators believe was cooking oil spewed from a sewer pipe into the Cuyahoga River. Investigators said on Friday that several hundred liters of the substance killed or disabled hundreds of gulls near the Kingsbury Run tributary. Most of them were just downstream from the site where environmentalists last week celebrated the river’s comeback since floating oil and debris caught fire on June 22, 1969.
■UNITED STATES
Kittens hearten biologists
The discovery of 10 lynx kittens this spring marks the first newborns documented in Colorado since 2006, heartening biologists overseeing restoration of the mountain feline. The tuft-eared cats with big, padded feet were native to Colorado, but were wiped out by the early 1970s by logging, trapping, poisoning and development. Biologists found no kittens the past two years, possibly partly because of a drop in the number of snowshoe hares, the cats’ main food source. This year, seven male and three female kittens were found in five dens.
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka has spent decades uncovering Russian spy networks, sabotage attempts and disinformation campaigns against Europe. Speaking in an interview from a high-security compound on the outskirts of Prague, he is now warning allies that pushing Kyiv to accept significant concessions to end the war in Ukraine would only embolden the Kremlin. “Russia would spend perhaps the next 10 to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is central and eastern Europe,” said Koudelka, a major general who heads the country’s Security Information Service. “If Ukraine loses, or is forced
CHAGOS ISLANDS: Recently elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told lawmakers that the contents of negotiations are ‘unknown’ to the government Mauritius’ new prime minister ordered an independent review of a deal with the UK involving a strategically important US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean, placing the agreement under fresh scrutiny. Under a pact signed last month, the UK ceded sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, while retaining control of Diego Garcia — the island where the base is situated. The deal was signed by then-Mauritian prime minister Pravind Jugnauth and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Oct. 3 — a month before elections in Mauritius in which Navin Ramgoolam became premier. “I have asked for an independent review of the
THIRD IN A ROW? An expert said if the report of a probe into the defense official is true, people would naturally ask if it would erode morale in the military Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) has been placed under investigation for corruption, a report said yesterday, the latest official implicated in a crackdown on graft in the country’s military. Citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation, British newspaper the Financial Times said that the investigation into Dong was part of a broader probe into military corruption. Neither the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Chinese embassy in Washington replied to a request for confirmation yesterday. If confirmed, Dong would be the third Chinese defense minister in a row to fall under investigation for corruption. A former navy
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