■ THAILAND
Kids kidnapped, one killed
A gang headed by a policeman kidnapped five children as they were being driven to school, killing one girl so she would not identify them, a police official said yesterday. Four kidnappers abducted a six-year-old boy and four girls aged three, six, 14 and 16, in Chachoengsao Province on Friday morning, deputy national police chief Jongruk Jutanond said. The driver, 39, who is related to all of the children, was also kidnapped. The abductors demanded a 3 million baht (US$90,000) ransom from the man’s family. The driver’s 14-year-old niece was found dead on Saturday in Chonburi Province near Bangkok, while his 16-year-old daughter survived with injuries and told police who the captors were. The three smaller children were released on Saturday. The driver and two suspected abductors remain missing.
■ INDONESIA
Food aid plane crashes
An American pilot has died after his light plane delivering food aid in the remote Papua Province crashed, an official from a missionary organization said yesterday. Contact with the plane was lost on Saturday in between the Taive and Nduduk districts, said Norbertus Tunyanan, aviation manager for the Association of Mission Aviation in Wamena, about 275km southwest of the provincial capital Jayapura.
■ AUSTRALIA
Minister to seek clemency
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday he would use upcoming talks in Indonesia to raise the issue of clemency for three Australian drug traffickers held there on death row. The trio are part of the so-called “Bali Nine,” a group of Australians convicted over a foiled plot to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Bali into Australia in 2005.
■ CAMBODIA
Ieng Sary out of hospital
Ailing Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary has been discharged from hospital after one week and returned to the custody of the genocide tribunal, a court official said yesterday. The 82-year-old former foreign minister of the ultra-communist regime was rushed to Phnom Penh’s Calmette Hospital on Aug. 1 after he found blood in his urine. He was taken back to the court on Friday afternoon, tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said. Ieng Sary is one of five top Khmer Rouge leaders detained by the UN-backed court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during their 1975 to 1979 rule. Up to 2 million people died of starvation and overwork or were executed by the Khmer Rouge, which dismantled modern society in its effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia.
■ JAPAN
Food confidence shaken
The government pays close attention to food safety as consumers there are “fussy” unlike in China, which can hide inconvenient facts from its people, the farm minister said yesterday. The nation is “constantly under pressure from consumers ... unlike China, a socialist country, where in principle you do not have to tell consumers anything or you can keep inconvenient things under wraps,” Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Seiichi Ota said. Confidence in food safety has been shaken since last year due to a series of mislabeling scandals and poisoning of consumers who ate dumplings imported from China.
■ BANGLADESH
Bomb hurts three kids
A police official says a homemade bomb has exploded in the capital, wounding three children aged between 5 to 10 years. Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Rezaul Karim says the blast occurred on Saturday while the children were playing with a tin pot that they did not realize contained explosives. Karim says they found the pot near their homes in the city’s South Masundi district. He says the children are being treated mainly for splinter injuries at Dhaka Medical College Hospital and that none are seriously hurt.
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