■ Indonesia
More troops leave Aceh
Indonesia withdrew another 2,600 soldiers from tsunami-battered Aceh Province yesterday as part of the military's commitment to an accord to end three decades of fighting with separatist rebels, an official said. The troops -- among some 30,000 security forces slated to leave the province by Dec. 31 -- set sail from the northern port town of Lhokseumawe on three warships, with another 3,500 soldiers scheduled to go by the month's end. Indonesia withdrew its first 800 troops on Sunday. The soldiers sang and waved their helmets in the air yesterday as they boarded the vessels, which left for the towns of Palembang on Sumatra island, and Semarang and Surabaya on the main island of Java.
■ Indonesia
Pollution case to go ahead
An Indonesian court ruled yesterday that the pollution trial of a local unit of US mining giant Newmont and its American president should go ahead. The court rejected defense arguments that the indictment was flawed. "The defendant's legal exception is hereby rejected and the trial shall proceed with the examination of the case," chief judge Ridwan Damanik said. The trial in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi Province, was adjourned until Oct. 7. Newmont Minahasa Raya, the Denver-based company's Indonesian subsidiary, and its president Richard Ness are accused of polluting Buyat Bay near a now-defunct company mine in North Sulawesi.
■ China
Team finds 1,000 old bombs
A Japanese team in northeastern China has dug up another 1,000 bombs, including 281 with chemical weapons, abandoned by retreating imperial troops at the end of World War II, officials said yesterday. The bombs were found in a residential area of Yichun, a city in Heilongjiang Province which was part of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, a government statement said. No one was injured as residents had been evacuated for the excavation, which was completed this month by a 30-strong team from Japan and some 100 people on the Chinese side, a government official said.
■ India
Man chained for two years
A low-caste Hindu man in India has been chained to the verandah of his house for more than two years after fellow villagers declared him insane, the Times of India newspaper reported yesterday. Upendra Naik, 32, was declared mentally unsound in July 2003 after villagers said he stole a trident from a temple in their village, near the town of Kendrapara in the eastern state of Orissa. They also said he was violent and often hit residents. "I am an innocent person," Naik, a Dalit -- as Hinduism's lowest "untouchable" caste is now known -- was quoted as saying.
■ Japan
N Korea talks to resume
Japan said yesterday it will resume talks with North Korea which have been stalled for almost a year in a dispute over kidnappings, a day after the North signed a deal to ease concerns about its nuclear program. "Dialogue between the two governments has been suspended since the end of last year but we will resume talks," Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference. He did not set a date for renewed talks, which would aim to establish diplomatic relations, saying only, "It's good to hold them as soon as possible."
■ Italy
De facto unions legalized
Common-law status might be applied to offer some legal protection to unmarried heterosexual couples, a top Italian cardinal said Monday -- a rare concession by the Roman Catholic Church, which has long condemned "de facto" unions. Cardinal Camillo Ruini gave no indication that the recognition would be extended to same-sex couples, and said that any protection should stop short of envisioning "something similar to a marriage." He said full legal recognition to unmarried couples would eclipse the nature and value of traditional families.
■ Rwanda
Ex-ministers go on trial
Three former Rwandan Cabinet ministers went on trial Monday for their alleged roles in their country's 1994 genocide, and a fourth convicted earlier heard his appeal had been rejected. In addition to being Cabinet ministers, the three who went on trial Monday were leaders of the former ruling party that presided over the 100-day slaughter in 1994 at least half a million members of the Tutsi ethnic minority and politically moderates from the Hutu majority. The ministers pleaded not guilty to charges that include genocide and crimes against humanity.
■ Iraq
Al-Qaeda using new bases
The al-Qaeda terror network has capitalized on the insurgency in Iraq by creating a new training ground to replace the bases it lost in Afghanistan in 2001, a UN expert panel said on Monday. The chaos in Iraq will thereby likely increase the danger of future terrorist attacks considerably, the panel said in its latest status report to the UN Security Council on al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's former Taliban leaders. "Recruits travel there from many parts of the world and acquire skills in urban warfare, bomb-making, assassination and suicide attacks," the panel said. The Security Council created the expert panel, led by British counterterrorism specialist Richard Barrett, to advise it on strategy in its anti-terror efforts.
■ Austria
G8 fails to persuade Russia
Top officials from the US, EU, Canada and Japan failed to persuade Russia that Iran's nuclear program should be reported to the UN Security Council, an EU diplomat said yesterday in Vienna. The diplomat was summarizing discussions on Iran at a dinner meeting of foreign ministers from the G8 countries -- the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia. "Russia still sees room for diplomacy in Vienna," the EU diplomat told reporters on condition of anonymity. The dinner meeting took place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
■ United Kingdom
Rushdie calls on moderates
Novelist Salman Rushdie has urged the "silent majority" of Muslims to speak up to prevent their culture being hijacked by extremists. "If it goes on being silent, then its culture and religion will be hijacked by the extremists and it will be very difficult to go on saying `that's not us' ... You've got to speak up," Rushdie said in an interview with the BBC World Service. Excerpts from the interview were released yesterday. Rushdie said he believed the majority would speak out. "Maybe it takes something as horrifying as the bombings in London to make people break ranks," Rushdie said. Rushdie was placed under a death sentence by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 for allegedly blaspheming against Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses.
■ United States
Sheehan speech cut short
An antiwar speech by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, was cut short on Monday in New York after the organizer of the event was arrested and police officers confiscated his audio equipment. The claps and cheers that had greeted Sheehan's arrival at the rally in Union Square quickly turned to furious chants of "Let her speak!" as officers ushered away the organizer, Paul Zulkowitz, who the police said lacked audio permits for the event. Angry activists followed officers as they led Zulkowitz away, waving their fists and shouting, "Shame, shame, shame." Sheehan was ending her speech when the police arrested Zulkowitz.
■ Honduras
Camp opens for Iraq guards
A US company specializing in celebrity security and explosives handling has opened a training camp in Honduras for future security guards headed for Iraq. Ninety-seven Chileans are taking part in the exercises in a remote, mountainous site 60km northwest of the capital Tegucigalpa, Honduran newspaper La Tribuna reported on Monday, quoting Benjamin Canales, manager of Your Solutions. The US company has already sent 36 Hondurans to Iraq and is preparing to send 50 more, along with 95 people of other nationalities. The head of the joint chiefs of staff in Honduras, General Romeo Vasquez, said the armed forces would look into the US company's operations.
■ Mexico
Quake drill reminds city
Millions of Mexicans, from schoolchildren to office workers, poured out of buildings in the capital on Monday in an evacuation drill to mark 20 years since an earthquake killed thousands and changed the country. Some 2.6 million people took part in the exercise, city authorities said, emptying universities, tower blocks and schools in the most tremor-prone parts of the city, which sits on soft mud left over from a dried-up pre-Hispanic lake. Church bells chimed and the national flag flew at half-mast in the main Zocalo square downtown where thousands were crushed as hotels and housing blocks crumbled on Sept. 19, 1985. Mexico City holds smaller quake drills every year on the anniversary of the 1985 disaster.
■ Peru
Squatters at famed site
Around 30 families have pitched shacks on land supposedly off-limits around Peru's famous Nazca lines, a UN World Heritage Site, cultural officials said on Monday. The head of Peru's National Institute of Culture in the nearby town of Ica, Domingo Cabel, said that although the lines had been vandalized before, the invasion of squatters was unprecedented -- and hard to prevent. Cabel said the families invaded the area about two weeks ago but were about 30km from the most famous drawings -- which include a monkey with a spiral tail and a hummingbird. The gigantic figures were etched into a desert plain south of Lima possibly by the Nazca civilization, which lived between 200BC and 650AD.
■ Turkey
EU settles on basis for talks
The EU resolved its differences on Monday over how to respond to Turkey's continued refusal to recognize Cyprus, clearing the way for EU membership talks to start with the Muslim state on Oct. 3. In a draft declaration, the EU states told Ankara that it must recognize the Cypriot government, but allowed it to do so any time up to the time of actual accession -- a process that could take at least a decade.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia