Suu Kyi Sentenced By Court To A 3 Years Prison

YANGON: A Myanmar court has found pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kui guilty of violating her house arrest, but the head of the military-ruled country says she can serve out a 1 1/2-year sentence under house arrest.

The court initially sentenced Suu Kyi on Tuesday to a three-year prison term. But after a five-minute recess, the country’s home minister entered the courtroom and read aloud a special order from junta chief Than Shwe.

The order said Than Shwe was cutting the sentence in half to 1 1/2 years and that it could be served under house arrest.

Suu Kyi has been in detention for 14 of the last 20 years, mostly under house arrest.

The court also sentenced American John Yettaw to seven years in prison, including four years at hard labor, for entering pro-democracy leader’s home while she was under house arrest.

The 53-year-old Yettaw was found guilty Tuesday of violating the terms of Suu Kyi’s detention by swimming to her lakeside home uninvited and staying for two days.

The court sentenced Yettaw to three years in prison for breaching Suu Kyi’s house arrest, three years in prison with hard labor for an immigration violation and another year in jail with hard labor for swimming in a restricted zone.

It was not clear if the prison terms would be served concurrently.

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Suu Kyi Sentenced By Court To A 3 Years Prison

Flooding In Taiwan 38 Killed

TAIPEI : At least 38 people were killed and another 62 missing in Taiwan’s worst flooding in half a century after Typhoon Morakot battered the island, rescuers and officials said on Tuesday.

Some 35 people were also injured as the typhoon lashed the island with a record three metres (118 inches) of rain over the weekend, submerging houses, streets and bringing down bridges, said the National Fire Agency.

Rescue missions were in full swing Tuesday with the authorities rushing out helicopters to remote areas cut off by fallen bridges or raging rivers.

Reports said up to 600 people were still trapped in a village devastated by mudslides but authorities would not confirm the number.

“My house is gone. We have been trapped for four days and we are scared,” a man from Hsiaolin village, in southern Kaohsiung county, told reporters after being airlifted to safety.

Armoured vehicles and marine landing craft, as well as rubber dinghies, were mobilised in a rescue operation involving nearly 6,000 troops, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.

In central and southern Taiwan, heavy rain caused widespread floods and mudslides, particularly in the county of Pingtung, where thousands of people had been trapped in three coastal townships.

Pingtung county government said residents from worst-hit areas took shelter in government facilities as the region is still without electricity and water despite receding floodwater.

Typhoon Morakot has caused at least five billion Taiwan dollars (156 million US) in agricultural damage while 61,000 houses were left without power and 850,000 homes without water, according to officials.

Among the missing were 14 workers who disappeared when their makeshift shelter beside a river in Kaohsiung was washed away by rising floodwaters early Sunday.

A typhoon that struck Taiwan in August 1959 killed 667 people and left some 1,000 missing.

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Flooding In Taiwan 38 Killed