THAILAND
Militants kill five people
Police said suspected militants killed five people and wounded 11 in three overnight attacks in the insurgency-plagued south. Police Colonel Chaiwat Nittayawimon said one soldier and one paramilitary ranger were killed overnight on Wednesday when about 10 suspected militants attacked their operations base in Songkhla Province. Another ranger was wounded. Police did not say if the attackers stole any weapons. In two other attacks late on Wednesday and early yesterday in other southern provinces, suspected insurgents killed three, including a four-year-old girl, and wounded 10.
CHINA
Pilot refused to give up spot
A pilot’s refusal to give up his landing slot to a passenger plane that issued a distress call to say it was running out of fuel almost caused a disaster, state media reported yesterday. Privately owned Juneyao Airlines confirmed one of its pilots refused to give way when a Qatar Airways plane contacted air traffic controllers at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, asking permission to land immediately. The pilot of the Qatar plane said it had just five minutes’ worth of fuel left after it was diverted from Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the Global Times newspaper reported, adding that a disastrous accident was only narrowly averted. The Qatar plane was traveling from Doha when it was ordered to divert due to a thunderstorm on Aug. 13. Air traffic controllers at Hongqiao ordered the Juneyao pilot to circle the airport and allow the Qatar plane to land first, but the pilot refused. The Global Times said the Juneyao pilot claimed he had been waiting “a long time” and needed to land “right now,” citing comments posted online. Juneyao Airlines said the pilot and crew had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, but that the “rumors on the Internet are far from the truth.”
AFGHANISTAN
Would-be bombers set free
President Hamid Karzai met a group of would-be child suicide bombers aged as young as seven on Wednesday and ordered their release on compassionate grounds. The 20 or so youngsters were recruited individually by the Taliban, often at religious schools, and promised virgins in paradise after they blew themselves up, a statement from the presidential palace said. However, all of the group were either arrested or surrendered to security forces before they could strike. Officials accuse the Taliban of using an increasing number of children in suicide attacks, as they are easily recruited and difficult to detect.
CHINA
Mongol killer executed
A truck driver was executed for killing an ethnic Mongol herder in a case that sparked Inner Mongolia’s largest demonstrations in 20 years. Xinhua news agency said in a brief report that Li Lindong (李林東) was executed on Aug. 18. The report, dated Aug. 19, was posted to a regional news Web site and appeared to not be widely circulated. The herder, Mergen, was killed on May 10 while he and others were blocking the road through their village to protest noise and pollution produced by coal trucks transiting the grasslands. Police said Li ran over Mergen and then dragged his body for 145m before he died. His death and that of another Mongol in a clash with Han coalminers sparked protests across the sprawling northern pastureland demanding justice and greater protection for Mongol culture and the nomadic herding lifestyle.
PERU
Powerful quake rocks nation
A powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook the east of the country on Wednesday and was felt more than 480km away in the capital Lima, as well as in neighboring Ecuador and Brazil. Seismologists from the US Geological Survey said the epicenter of the quake was 80km south of Pucallpa, a city isolated by the Andes and the Amazon rainforest. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties and the US government’s Pacific warning center said no destructive tsunami was created after the quake, which was deep at 145km underground. Guillermo Alvizuri, head of Peru’s civil defense operations, said authorities were trying to contact remote places such as Contamana, a town of 17,000 inhabitants deep in the Amazon and close to the epicenter. “So far we do not have reports of any material damage or casualties,” Alvizuri told local media. “At the moment, no major cities have reported any damage, neither has Pucallpa. It was felt strongly, but no damage was reported, except for some telephone lines which were cut.”
UNITED STATES
Lennon to star in tribute
American stars Sean Lennon and Beck are among the headliners at a Hollywood Bowl concert on Sunday paying tribute to late French musician Serge Gainsbourg, praised as a lyricist, but little known in the US. Also playing will be Lulu Gainsbourg, son of the noted French artist, who was five when his father died in 1991. French composer Jean Claude Vannier will conduct the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at the event, which includes a performance of the Gainsbourg concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson. The collection “did not have a lot of success in France when it came out,” Vannier said. Gainsbourg was known for an eclectic repertoire from jazz to pop to reggae, and he collaborated with singers including Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot, to produce commercial hits like Je t’aime ... moi non plus and Bonnie & Clyde.
ITALY
Tourists take unexpected dip
Four Spanish tourists took an unexpected swim near Venice on Wednesday after a wave caused by a large motorboat capsized their gondola, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported. The holidaymakers were quickly rescued by other gondoliers gliding nearby, but the incident has reignited debate over the difficulties gondolas face on the waters surrounding the picturesque Italian city. The flat-bottomed tourist boats are a Venetian fixture, frequently hired by tourists looking to explore the city’s canals, but they are vulnerable to the sudden wash from passing motorboats. “The problem remains the movement of the swell caused by motorboats,” the head of a gondoliers association, Aldo Reato, said, adding that he has been complaining about the problem for two years.
GREECE
Police free to enter schools
Greece has abolished restrictions that made it difficult for police to enter university campuses, which have become a hotbed for protests against the country’s austerity measures. The new law also reduces the say of student political parties in academic administration. Lawmakers passed the new legislation on Wednesday, which left-wing parties opposed. Under previous freedom of expression laws, police could only enter university grounds with rarely-granted permission from academic authorities. That system was widely abused, particularly by rioting youths who would hole up in university buildings to attack police during protests against austerity measures.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the