AFGHANISTAN
Ex-Guantanamo man killed
NATO forces said they have killed a former Guantanamo detainee who was a “key affiliate of the al-Qaeda network” in an overnight raid. NATO said Sabar Lal Melma organized attacks in eastern Kunar province and helped fund insurgent operations. The military alliance said he was in contact with senior al-Qaeda members in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Troops surrounded Melma’s house in Jalalabad city on Friday night. NATO spokesman Captain Justin Brockhoff said Melma came out of the building holding an AK-47 assault rifle and was killed. Several other people were detained. A guard at Melma’s house said Melma was released from Guantanamo about four years ago.
JAPAN
Two dead as storm hits
Two people were killed and dozens injured as a strong tropical storm landed yesterday with heavy rains causing floods that damaged homes and disrupted traffic. Tropical storm Talas hit the island of Shikoku in western Japan at around 1am (GMT) and was moving north at a slow pace, the Meteorological Agency said. TV footage showed homes being flooded and large waves pounding harbors. Domestic media reported that five people were missing with about 40 injured in addition to the two killed. The agency expects the storm to finish passing through Japan early today.
VIETNAM
Six girls drown in river
Six schoolgirls drowned when their bamboo boat capsized as they tried to pick flowers from floating water hyacinth plants on a branch of Hanoi’s Red River, a health official said yesterday. The classmates, all aged 12, had rowed out towards the middle of the tributary in a suburban area north of the capital when the accident happened on Friday, the local medical worker said, declining to be named. “There were seven girls on board. Local residents could rescue only one after some other kids who were bathing closer to shore shouted for help,” she said. None of the girls who died were able to swim. A joint funeral was held the same day for all six girls.
MALAYSIA
Tusks seized by customs
More than 1,000 African elephant tusks have been seized in two separate shipments in the past two months, reports said yesterday. In the first incident, customs and wildlife officials seized 405 tusks in a container at the southern port of Pasir Gudang on July 8. The ship carrying the cargo was from an undisclosed African port that had been through Singapore. A month later enforcement officials found 664 tusks in a container from the United Arab Emirates in the northern port of Butterworth. Wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC described Malaysia as a major wildlife transit hub after Hong Kong authorities seized nearly two tonnes of elephant ivory worth about US$1.7 million in a shipment from Malaysia last month.
INDONESIA
Support voiced for Libya
Bali said yesterday it supported Libya’s peaceful transition towards democracy following the downfall of Muammar Qaddafi. “Indonesia supports the National Transitional Council in Libya in carrying out the peaceful transition towards democracy,” Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said in a statement. Natalegawa said the process of the democratic transition must reflect the wishes and aspirations of Libyans. “A political process which grants Libyans the chance to decide their own future is the best solution in resolving the issues in Libya,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Man bites snake
A snake bite left the victim seriously hurt, but the injured party is not whom you would expect. Police say a python underwent emergency surgery after a man allegedly bit the creature twice. Officers were called to Del Paso Heights in Sacramento, California, around 6:30pm on Thursday after a passer-by reported that a man was lying on the ground and may have been assaulted, according to Sergeant Andrew Pettit. When they arrived, they found David Senk, 54, still lying there — but police say he was not the one who was assaulted. Another man approached officers and accused Senk of taking two bites out of his 1m pet python, Pettit said. Senk was arrested on suspicion of unlawfully maiming or mutilating a reptile and booked on US$10,000 bail. In a jailhouse interview with KXTL-TV on Friday, Senk said he had no memory of the incident and that he has a drinking problem.
UNITED STATES
Planes collide in Alaska
Authorities say two single-engine planes have collided in midair over western Alaska and one of the pilots is presumed dead. Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters says the two pilots were the only people aboard the planes when they collided on Friday near the village of Nightmute. She says one plane landed and the other crashed and burned.
UNITED STATES
Plane deflected from Obama
A fighter jet has intercepted a small civilian airplane in restricted airspace near the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, and escorted it to an airport in West Virginia. The North American Aerospace Defense Command says the Piper plane was out of radio communication when it was intercepted by an F-15E fighter at about 4:45pm. It was diverted to the airport in Martinsburg. US President Barack Obama was at Camp David at the time. The White House said the pilot of the small plane would be interviewed.
UNITED STATES
World War II’s end marked
About 20 World War II veterans gathered aboard the battleship Missouri in Pearl Harbor to mark the 66th year since the end of World War II. The USS Missouri was anchored in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, when it hosted Japanese leaders who signed surrender documents formally ending the war. The now decommissioned vessel is currently a museum called the Battleship Missouri Memorial. On Friday, about 300 people — including the veterans and active duty sailors, marines, airmen and soldiers — observed the anniversary of the end of the war with a ceremony on the vessel’s teak deck.
UNITED STATES
Children catch new swine flu
Health officials say a novel strain of swine flu has sickened two children in Pennsylvania and Indiana. One had contact with pigs. The other is believed to have been infected by a caregiver who had contact with pigs, suggesting the virus can spread person-to-person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the new virus contains a gene from the H1N1 swine flu that caused a worldwide scare two years ago, plus parts of other viruses that have infected pigs over the past decade. The children were infected in July and last month and have recovered. Both had received flu shots last year. Officials are investigating other reports of illness in people who attended an agricultural fair in Pennsylvania. No additional cases have been confirmed so far.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove