■THAILAND
Protests wind down
Protests in Bangkok and on the Thai-Cambodian border wound down yesterday, one peacefully, the other leaving dozens injured. About 30,000 supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra ended their protest in Bangkok at midnight on Saturday, marking the third anniversary of the Sept. 19, 2006, coup that ousted him. The demonstration ended without violence. A simultaneous protest on Saturday by the rival People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) near the ruins of an 11th-century Hindu temple on the Cambodian border resulted in a clash. The ultra-nationalist PAD wanted to march to the Preah Vihear site to protest Cambodia’s erection of housing on a disputed area adjacent to the temple. The 2,000 protesters ran into a blockade of police and villagers. The clash left dozens injured, two critically.
■INDIA
Pair suspected in murders
A teenager in the northern state of Haryana murdered seven members of her family, including her parents, news reports said yesterday. The 19-year-old woman was arrested with her lover in Kabulpur village on Saturday, the NDTV network reported. Police said the pair committed the crime fearing their families would never allow them to get married since they belonged to the same clan. The bodies of the victims were found in the house on Tuesday. Police told the PTI news agency that the man procured poison and the woman mixed it with food and served it to her family. Once the victims fell unconscious, she called her lover to the house and the two strangled them.
■INDIA
Daughter lost in card game
A father gave his teenage daughter to a fellow gambler after losing a card game, media reported yesterday, with police launching a hunt to retrieve the girl. Ismail Sheikh, from a village in West Bengal, used his 18-year-old daughter as a stake after he lost all his money, the Times of India said. “Ismail lost the game again and Mustafa walked away with the girl,” said Satyajit Bandhopadhyay, a senior police officer investigating the case. The daughter protested, but Mustafa dragged her out of the village, the report said. Family members were quoted as saying the father was a compulsive gambler with a drinking problem and that they had thrown him out of the house after the incident.
■PAKISTAN
Taliban commander dies
A top Taliban commander, who was injured in a military operation in which he was arrested last week, died from his injuries yesterday, the military said. “Sher Mohammad Qasab, who had multiple bullet wounds, succumbed to his injuries on Sunday morning,” it said in a statement. Qasab, one of the most senior Taliban on a wanted list in the Swat valley, was arrested on Wednesday. The army said he was injured in a military operation in which three of his sons were killed and another captured.
■JAPAN
Black bear injures nine
A bear injured nine people at a highway rest stop before being shot dead in a souvenir shop. The black bear seriously injured four men on Saturday afternoon in Nyukawa town about 230km west of Tokyo, firefighter Tomohiko Akano said. The 1.3m bear attacked people at a bus parking lot, then entered a lodge, where it was trapped in a souvenir shop and shot dead by a hunter. None of the people attacked suffered life-threatening injuries.
■RUSSIA
Muslim cleric murdered
A top Muslim cleric was killed yesterday in an attack in the North Caucasus. “The murder of the high-ranking spiritual leader occurred early this morning,” a local police source was quoted by Interfax as saying. “His car was fired on by unknown assailants as the vehicle was stopped at a traffic light in the center of Cherkessk.” Ismail Bostanov was the rector of the Islamic Institute and a long-serving Muslim official in the Karachai-Cherkessia region. His son was also wounded, the RIA Novosti news agency said.
■RUSSIA
Officials declare ship clean
Prosecutors found no suspicious materials on the ship Arctic Sea despite media reports it was carrying an air-defense system for Iran, newswires reported on Saturday. The cargo ship was officially carrying timber from Finland to Algeria when it was boarded on July 24 by eight men. They were charged with kidnapping and piracy after it was intercepted by Russian warships off Cape Verde. Since then there has been speculation the ship was carrying a secret cargo. British and Russian press reports, citing military sources in Israel and Russia, said the Arctic Sea had been loaded with Russian S-300 missiles at the naval port of Kaliningrad without the Kremlin’s knowledge. A spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Investigative Committee said prosecutors found nothing but timber on the ship.
■SERBIA
Gay pride parade canceled
Authorities effectively banned the gay pride parade in Belgrade, gay right activists claimed on Saturday, following threats of violence from extreme nationalist groups. The organizers of the Pride Parade, scheduled for yesterday, said the interior ministry told them their event was too risky and could not be guaranteed security. Instead, they were offered to a venue in the sprawling New Belgrade district, but refused. “It was not a legal ban, but it was an actual ban,” said Dusan Kosanovic of the organizational committee.
■GERMANY
Oktoberfest opens
Munich’s annual beer festival kicked off on Saturday amid complaints of higher prices. The two-week Oktoberfest, the 176th, has seen the price of a traditional liter mug up by 30 euro cents to between 8.10 euros (US$12) and 8.60 euros. “We are here just to booze. I can drink five liters and then I am completely smashed,” said 18-year-old Hans, an economics student, deploring the spike in beer prices. “It must be the world’s most expensive beer!” Meanwhile, the media was warned not to film drunken bare-chested revellers, angering the Bavarian journalists’ union, which has alleged “pre-censorship.”
■MIDDLE EAST
Decision made on Id al-Fitr
Fourteen Arab countries said they would celebrate the Muslim Id al-Fitr feast last night. The festivities, heralding the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, will be celebrated by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia and the Sunni community in Iraq, it was announced on Saturday.
■POLAND
Mourning period declared
President Lech Kaczynski declared two days of national mourning on Saturday for 13 miners killed in a methane gas explosion on Friday. A methane leak set off an explosion 1,050m below ground in the city of Ruda Slaska. The official mourning period will begin today at 6am.
■UNITED STATES
Dead woman found at hotel
The body of a naked woman with her throat slashed and a knife sticking out of it was found on Saturday at a luxury hotel next to Central Park, police said. Investigators looking into the death at the Jumeirah Essex House hotel, on the park’s southern edge, said the woman appeared to be in her 30s. The body was found by a maid on Saturday afternoon in a 10th floor condo at the 44-story Manhattan hotel. The hotel is near Broadway and upscale Fifth Avenue shops such as Tiffany & Co and Bergdorf Goodman.
■UNITED STATES
Strange lights explained
NASA said it successfully launched a rocket in Virginia as part of an experiment and the blast may have caused dozens of people to report seeing strange lights in the sky. The space agency said it launched the Black Brant XII on Saturday evening to gather data on the highest clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere. About the time of the launch, dozens of people in the Northeast started calling local television stations to report seeing strange lights. The calls came from as far away as Boston, which is about 610km northeast of the launch site.
■UNITED STATES
Residents rattled by alarm
A suburban New York City nuclear power plant’s siren system mistakenly blared out the warning “Emergency! Emergency! Emergency!” The ominous message rattled some of the residents of New City, about 48km north of midtown Manhattan. Auto shop worker Rudy Gaspari said the mechanical voice had an unsettling, post-apocalyptic overtone to it. The voice came from an Indian Point plant siren located downtown during a test on Friday, the Journal News reported. Indian Point spokesman Jerry Nappi says the voice message “shouldn’t have happened.” He says plant officials have disabled the voice mechanism in the siren. Four other sirens with faulty connections also have been fixed.
■UNITED STATES
Kid shares father’s cocaine
New Jersey police said a four-year-old boy shared cocaine with his friends at day care because his father told him it was candy. Newark police say 25-year-old Shaheed Wright of East Orange put several baggies of cocaine inside his son’s jacket after police nearly caught him with it. The boy shared the drugs with three other four-year-olds at his day care center on Friday. A teacher spotted a girl with a baggie in her mouth and called authorities after seeing the white powdery substance. The children were taken to a hospital, but none was injured. Police found more baggies of cocaine after searching the boy’s pockets. Wright was charged with four counts of child endangerment and drug offenses.
■CANADA
Seaway bridge shut down
The Seaway International Bridge, a temporary border crossing that connects New York state with Canada’s Cornwall Island and Cornwall city, was shut down on Saturday. The bridge was closed after tensions rose in a long-standing dispute between the Canada Border Services Agency and an Aboriginal community that lives on Cornwall Island. The Mohawks have objected to giving the border guards handguns. It remains unclear if the Canadian Border Services Agency, US border officials, or the Mohawk community initiated the closing. This came a day after the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne accused the Canadian border agents of seizing vehicles and fining residents who failed to report to customs after coming to the island from the US.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
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