Malaysia

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was accused of sodomizing his male aide, sparking speculation today that he might be arrested on the same charge that led to his imprisonment a decade ago in one of Malaysia's biggest political upheavals. Anwar, who resurrected his political career after leading the opposition to spectacular gains in recent elections, denied the allegation, which was made in a police complaint filed by the 23-year-old aide.

The equivalent of nine glasses of wine a night is just dinner to the pen-tailed tree shrew, a small Malaysian mammal resistant to the effects of chronic drinking, researchers reported Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The shrew's drink of choice is bertam palm nectar, naturally fermented to have an alcohol content up to 3.8% -- just a few tenths of a percent shy of Guinness Draught beer.

Gwen Stefani will not wear revealing costumes during her Aug. 21 concert in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after Muslim students protested her sexy outfits and steamy performances. Show organizer Maxis Communications said the 37-year-old singer will follow the local code of ethics for foreign artists, which bans the unnecessary baring of skin. "She will abide by the Malaysian authorities' guidelines to ensure that her show will not be offensive to local sensitivities," the company said Thursday.

Malaysia's Islamic opposition party demanded Friday that Gwen Stefani be forbidden from performing in the country, saying the U.S. pop singer would corrupt the youth of the Muslim-majority nation. Kamarulzaman Mohamed, an official of the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, said Stefani's Aug. 21 concert in Kuala Lumpur would promote promiscuity, worsening an existing "teenage social problem." "The issue is that Gwen Stefani brings with her a bad image.

Gwen Stefani was a good girl, just like she promised. The 37-year-old pop star wowed fans Tuesday in Muslim-majority Malaysia on Tuesday, performing in costumes that showed almost no skin after Islamic critics claimed that her revealing clothes could corrupt the country's youth. She burst onto the stage wearing a black leotard under a white short-sleeved shirt and black-and-white striped hot pants suit, with black gloves up to her elbows. About 7,000 people were in attendance.

Police in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, used water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters in one of the nation's biggest anti-government rallies in nearly a decade. Police arrested at least a dozen people as tens of thousands of protesters, led by opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim, marched in heavy rain to the king's palace to demand changes to the country's electoral system.

A Malaysian state sultan has urged people to shun opposition-led street demonstrations calling for electoral reforms, saying they are "not nice, improper and against the wishes of all Malaysians," according to news reports. Sultan Ahmad Shah, the ruler of eastern Pahang state, said protests are not part of the country's culture. He added that Malaysia's royalty still firmly supports the government, the Star newspaper reported.

Madonna's performance was struck from Malaysia's television broadcast of the Grammy Awards because her skimpy outfit and steamy dance moves were too risque for audiences in this Muslim-majority nation, a network official said Friday. The Grammys aired Thursday night on Malaysia's 8TV station, 12 hours after the show took place in the United States, but Malaysian fans were surprised when the show kicked off without the much-hyped opening act, Madonna and the cartoon-fronted rock group Gorillaz.

A Malaysian recruit pulled out of an Al Qaeda plan that envisioned him and two others piloting planes in a second wave of Sept. 11-style attacks on the United States, Asian security officials said. The recruit, Zaini Zakaria, went to a flight school in Malaysia and obtained a license to fly a small plane, but the plan for a suicide attack never was carried out, the officials said.

When the government of Malaysia sought to repair its tarnished image in the U.S. by arranging a meeting between President Bush and its controversial prime minister in 2002, it followed the same strategy as many other well-heeled interests in Washington: It called on lobbyist Jack Abramoff for help. It was a tall order. The then-prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, had been chastised by the Clinton administration for repeated anti-Semitic statements and for jailing political opponents.