World Affairs Overview

Ex-Thai PM to be charged with murder

THAILAND: Thailand's former premier Abhisit Vejjajiva is set to be charged with murder on Thursday over the death of a civilian during a military crackdown on anti-government "Red Shirt" rallies two years ago.

Abhisit, along with his then-deputy Suthep Thaugsuban, will be formally charged at Bangkok's Department of Special Investigation (DSI), making them the first officials to face a court over Thailand's worst political violence in decades.

About 90 people were killed and nearly 1,900 wounded in a series of street clashes between demonstrators and security forces, which culminated in a deadly army operation in May 2010 to break up the protest. The charge against Abhisit, who was Prime Minister at the time, relates to the fatal shooting of taxi driver Phan Kamkong.

AFP

McAfee back in US

US: Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee was back on American soil Wednesday after being expelled from Guatemala, escaping immediate deportation to Belize for questioning over his neighbour's murder.

Customs officials did not immediately respond to calls from AFP regarding McAfee's legal status and what would happen to him now, after he touched down at Miami International Airport. McAfee amassed an estimated $100 million fortune during the early days of the Internet in the 1990s, designing the pioneering anti-virus software that bears his name, before cashing out to become an intrepid adventure-seeker.

He decamped to Belize in 2009 after losing most of his fortune to bad investments and the financial crisis.

AFP

Philippines typhoon death toll tops 900

PHILIPPINES: The death toll from the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year has climbed above 900, with hundreds still missing, the government said Thursday.

Typhoon Bopha killed 902 people mostly on the Southern island of Mindanao, where floods and landslides caused major damage in nearly 2,000 villages on December 4, the civil defence office said. A total of 615 people remain missing, it said, a big reduction from the previous tally after rescuers found 296 tuna fishermen who had put to sea before Bopha made landfall. The government agency did not give further details. The typhoon, the deadliest natural disaster to hit the Philippines this year, destroyed 149,000 houses, it said.

AFP

Hans Christian Andersen's first fairy tale found

DENMARK: A Danish researcher has stumbled across the first fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark's national archives.

Entitled The Tallow Candle, the tale tells the story of a candle that has difficulty finding its place in the world until a tinder box discovers its worth and lights its wick.

National Archive director Mads Peter Christensen told the Politiken newspaper late Wednesday staff had been contacted by the researcher who disclosed the discovery.

Lacking the polished standards of Andersen's later fairy tales, it is believed to have been written when he was a schoolboy.

"This is a sensational discovery," Ejnar Stig Askgaard of the Odense City Museum and one of Denmark's leading Hans Christian Andersen experts told Politiken.

"Partly because it must be seen as Andersen's first fairy tale, and partly because it shows that he was interested in the fairy tale as a young man, before his authorship began," he said.

Askgaard's conclusions were confirmed by two other leading Andersen experts: research librarian Bruno Svindborg of the Royal Library and professor Johan de Mylius of the Andersen Centre and the University of Southern Denmark.

His poetry, travel articles and fairy tales have been translated into 125 languages.

AFP

'Drum major' quote coming off Martin Luther memorial

US: A controversially paraphrased quote from Martin Luther King is to be erased from the Washington monument honoring the slain civil rights leader, officials said Wednesday.

Taking advice from the monument's Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, the Department of Interior opted to remove the "drum major" inscription altogether, rather than engrave the original phrase in its entirety.

Lei and his team will undertake the work themselves sometime after Martin Luther King Day -- a federal holiday that falls on January 21, the same day as the public inauguration of President Barack Obama's second term.

Critics said the quote on the white granite monument -- "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness" -- took King's original words out of context and made him appear to have been arrogant.

King had said in a sermon a few months before his 1968 assassination: "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter." Obama dedicated the monument -- the only one on the National Mall dedicated to a person of a minority ethnic background or to an individual who was never a US President -- in October last year.

AFP