■INDONESIA
Journalists flout film ban
Journalists yesterday vowed to defy a ban on the screening of Australian movie Balibo, saying the film depicting alleged war crimes by Indonesian forces in East Timor is educational. The film directed by Robert Connolly and starring Anthony LaPaglia was banned without explanation on Tuesday hours before it was due to premier in the country at a private showing for the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club. It depicts the alleged murder of five Australian-based journalists by invading Indonesian forces in the East Timorese border town of Balibo in 1975. Indonesia claims the reporters — two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander — were killed in crossfire and has refused to cooperate with an Australian war crimes investigation launched this year. Alliance of Independent Journalists head Nezar Patria said its members had been invited to a screening last night at Utan Kayu Theatre in Jakarta, regardless of the ban. The film, which opened in Australia in July, was also scratched at the last minute from the program for the Jakarta International Film Festival starting next week.
■VIETNAM
Mass grave found
Authorities in central Vietnam have found a mass grave containing the remains of 25 communist soldiers killed during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Trong Luyen says the remains were recovered on Wednesday along with personal effects like sandals, belts, caps and hammocks. Construction workers discovered the remains while digging a drainage system in Quang Ngai city. The remains are believed to be those of communist commandos killed while attacking a South Vietnamese prison during the Tet Offensive in 1968.
■UNITED NATIONS
Disabled key to poverty work
The UN warned Wednesday that attempts to halve world poverty will be doomed unless the world’s estimated 650 million disabled people are pulled out of neglect and unjust discrimination. In an appeal to mark International Day for Persons with Disabilities yesterday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said disabled people formed “one of the world’s largest and most neglected groups.” About 20 percent of the world’s poorest people have some kind of disability, while 90 percent of disabled children in developing countries do not attend school, UN data showed. “These statistics shock our conscience,” Pillay said. “Unless persons with disabilities are brought into the development mainstream, it will be impossible to cut poverty in half by 2015,” she said.
■INDONESIA
Jet passengers injured
At least six passengers were injured yesterday when they jumped off a jet as it prepared to take off from Bali, falsely believing the plane was on fire, an airline official said. The Batavia Air Boeing 737 carrying 148 passengers and six crew was about to leave the terminal at the island’s main airport, en route to Surabaya city in East Java, when the incident happened at 11:45am. “Some passengers saw smoke coming out from the plane’s right side. They screamed and shouted that the plane was on fire,” airline spokesman Eddy Haryanto said. “That caused other passengers to panic and rush to the emergency exit. They forced open the door and jumped off the plane,” he said. Six injured passengers were sent to hospital, the spokesman said, adding their condition was unknown. “There was no fire, it was only smoke from the exhaust and that’s normal as the pilot had just started up the engines,” Haryanto said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
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