■ Cambodia
Crafty forgers arrested
Five men were arrested for allegedly forging signatures of top Cambodian leaders, including the prime minister, police said. Three of the five suspects, including alleged ring leader Khim Roath, 32, were paraded at a news conference in Phnom Penh on Wednesday. "We don't know yet how many people may have been victimized by this. It is so sophisticated that you cannot tell a document is a fake ... only police with expertise can,'' police General Sok Phal said. He said the gang could produce "any documents you ask for." Sok Phal said the forgers may have issued about 30 fake Cambodian citizenship papers to foreigners at prices between US$20,000 and US$40,000 each.
■ Malaysia
Dropped shotgun hurts five
Five customers were wounded when a bank security guard in Malaysia accidentally dropped his shotgun, local media reported yesterday. Three armed guards were delivering cash to the Maybank branch in Malacca when one of them dropped his weapon in the ATM area, police spokesman Sidin Abdul Karim was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency. The shotgun fired as it struck the floor, sending pellets flying within the enclosed area and hitting five people standing in line to draw cash. "I was shocked to hear the blast and fell down as both of my legs were in pain," victim Ong Poh Choo said. She was hit in both legs by six pellets.
■ India
Bodies to be retrieved
India was to begin a retrieval operation yesterday for the bodies of four trekkers -- one Swedish woman, an American and two unidentified others -- who went missing 22 years ago in Lahaul in northern Himachal Pradesh state. The four bodies were discovered intact last month, frozen in the Kangla Jot glacier, by porters accompanying a Spanish trekking group, the Indian Express newspaper reported. One of them was believed to be Margot Lydia Aulikki Ryyannen, who was 30 when she disappeared in the western Himalayas in 1982 with her American fiance.
■ Sri Lanka
Tigers still on terrorist list
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels will remain on a US list of banned terrorist groups alongside al-Qaeda until they prove they are serious about long-term peace, a top US counterterrorism official said. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels and the government are keeping to a two-year truce that stopped two decades of war, but the US is concerned about a spate of killings in the rebels' eastern stronghold blamed on internecine feuding. "The LTTE is currently on our list of foreign terrorist organizations, and they are going to remain there until they show by good word and deed that they are negotiating in good faith," US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, Cofer Black, told local media.
■ Japan
Protesters target airbase
Hundreds of activists on Okinawa island protested drilling near a coral reef yesterday at the proposed location of a new US airbase, organizers said. The drilling, designed to survey the site as a possible replacement for the Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station, comes weeks after a US military helicopter crash reignited long-standing friction over the heavy US military presence on Okinawa. About 390 residents, local lawmakers and environmentalists gathered in Nago city in northern Okinawa to protest the drilling, organizer Zenko Nakamura said.
■ Austria
Woman injected with oil
A medical intern at a western Austria hospital mistakenly injected an elderly patient with olive oil instead of antibiotics after mixing up bedside vials, officials said Wednesday. The patient, a 79-year-old woman in the hospital for an appendectomy, was not in life-threatening condition, hospital director Harald Geck told the Austria Press Agency. The mixup apparently happened when the intern reached for the wrong vial and injected the patient with olive oil that had been prepared by a hospital physiotherapist for a massage, Geck said.
■ Germany
Former Nazi charged
An 86-year-old Nazi war crimes suspect faced 164 counts of murder yesterday for his alleged role in the killings of Slovak civilians in three villages in early 1945. Ladislav Niznansky is accused of having headed the Slovak section of a Nazi unit code-named Edelweiss, which hunted resistance fighters and Jews after the Germans crushed an uprising against Slovakia's Nazi puppet government in 1944. Niznansky, now a German citizen, was arrested at his Munich home in January, paving the way for what could be one of Germany's last Nazi war crimes trials. Prosecutors say he issued orders for and participated in the shootings of 146 people in the villages of Ostry Grun and Klak in central Slovakia on Jan. 21, 1945.
■ Germany
Teen killer alleges abuse
A juvenile court Wednesday in Germany heard a 15-year-old youth confess to murdering his grandparents and claim that the grandfather had sexually abused the boy's 11-year-old sister. In a headline-grabbing case, the youth is on trial behind closed doors before Hildesheim State Court along with his teenage girlfriend and a male cousin, both of whom allegedly helped him plot and carry out the crime. The youth admitted strangling his 65-year-old grandmother, bludgeoning his 69-year-old grandfather with an iron bar and slitting both their throats. Defense attorneys argued that the youth had been outraged by sexual abuse "that far exceeded fondling and which continued over the course of several years."
■ Pakistan
Jets attack border region
Pakistani jets pounded an area of the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan yesterday in a two-hour barrage that a news report said killed dozens of people. The Pakistani military would not confirm the fighting but said they were looking into the reports. Pakistan's Geo television reported that a missile struck a compound where suspected militants were gathering near Khunkhela village early yesterday. It said foreign and local militants were believed to be at the site, and dozens may have been killed or wounded.
■ Uunited Kingdom
Blair shuffles Cabinet
British Prime Minister Tony Blair reshuffled his Cabinet on Wednesday, bringing back a key ally to lead Labour's campaigning ahead of a general election, expected in Spring 2005. Alan Milburn, who resigned as Blair's health secretary last year to spend more time with his family, returns to the frontline of British politics to coordinate and plan Labour's bid for re-election. Alan Johnson, a former junior education minister, was also drafted in to the Cabinet as work and pensions secretary to replace Andrew Smith, who stepped down earlier in the week.
■ Costa Rica
Iraq war support to end
The constitutional court of Costa Rica has ordered the government to withdraw the country's name from an international coalition that supports the US-led war in Iraq, officials said Wednesday. "We have been told that for constitutional reasons we must withdraw from the list of coalition members," Costa Rican Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar told reporters. The court has found three constitutional violations in the decision of the govern-ment of President Abel Pacheco to include Costa Rica in the coalition.
■ Colombia
Rebels free Indian leaders
Colombian Marxist guerrillas freed two Indian community leaders on Tuesday, bowing to pressure from hundreds of protesters who had deman-ded their release, indigenous groups said. About 400 Paez Indians, armed only with decorated sticks, marched into the jungles of Caqueta, in southwestern Colombia, demanding that the Revolu-tionary Armed Forces of Colombia free Arquimedes Vitonas, mayor of the mountain town of Toribio, and ex-mayor Gilberto Munoz. The pair had been kidnapped on Aug. 22.
■ Haiti
Police shoot dead 3 rebels
Haitian police and UN troops shot and killed three rebels, and another group of rebels retaliated by briefly holding a group of policemen hostage on Wednesday. Violence has escalated in the last few days as the national police and rebel former soldiers battle for control of security in Haiti. Police killed two rebels who ignored warnings to put down their weapons at a checkpoint in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday night, Police Commissioner Fritz Gerald Appolon said. The two wore camouflage uniforms and rode in a vehicle that had been seized from police and relabeled as an army vehicle, he said.
■ United States
Extinctions not isolated
Conservationists concerned about the extinction of plants and animals may be overlooking the danger to thousands of other species that depend on the threatened ones. A team of researchers led by Lian Pin Koh of the National University of Singapore studied some 12,200 plants and animals considered threatened or endangered, and calculated that an additional 6,300 dependent insects, mites, fungi and other species could be considered endangered. "What we found is that with the extinction of a bird, or a mammal or a plant, you aren't just necessarily wiping out just one, single species. We're also allowing all these unsung dependent species to be wiped out as well," one member of the team, Heather Proctor of Canada's Univer-sity of Alberta, said in a statement.
■ Argentina
1994 bombing protested
Thousands of Argentines angry over the lack of justice in a 1994 Jewish community center bombing rallied outside Congress on Wednesday, demanding government action to resolve Argentina's worst terrorist attack. The demonstration led by Jewish leaders came nearly a week after an Argentine court acquitted five men accused of being accessories to the bombing that killed 85 people and injured 200 more. Last week's acquittals left unan-swered who was behind the worst anti-Semitic attack in Latin America. A rigged van exploded July 18, 1994, outside the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Aid Association, known by its initials, AMIA. The blast leveled the seven-story building, a symbol of Argentina's 300,000 strong Jewish community.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
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