SINGAPORE
State blocks Islam film
Google yesterday blocked YouTube users in the city-state from viewing clips of an anti-Islamic film that has incited violent protests across the Muslim world, acting on a request by authorities. Attempts to access the low-budget Innocence of Muslims film on the Google-owned video-sharing Web site resulted in a message reading: “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.” Google could not be reached to comment, but it has also blocked access to clips of the film in Muslim-majority neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia. The Ministry of Home Affairs cited “security concerns” as the reason behind the request to Google in a press statement released on Wednesday.
AUSTRALIA
Aboriginal vote shelved
The government yesterday dropped plans to hold a referendum on formally recognizing the country’s Aborigines in the constitution, saying there was not enough public support for the move. Gillard described the vote as a “once in 50-year opportunity” when she first unveiled plans for the referendum in 2010, saying there was a rare moment of widespread public and parliamentary support. However, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said the plan had been shelved for two or three years due to a lack of community support. “I understand that people are disappointed. I’m disappointed myself,” she said.
INDONESIA
Jakarta holds run-off
Voters in the capital, Jakarta, cast their votes yesterday in a run-off election for a new governor whose key challenges will include tackling traffic congestion and poor infrastructure. The election pits incumbent Fauzi Bowo against the popular mayor of Solo City in Central Java Province, Joko Widodo. Widodo topped the vote in July’s first round — winning 43 percent of votes, with Bowo taking 34 percent — but failed to reach the 50 percent required for victory. Analysts have predicted a close race. Official results are expected on Sept. 29.
PAKISTAN
Drone attack love song a hit
In a sign of how the routine hunting down and killing of militants by unmanned CIA planes has leached into the popular imagination, drones have been given a starring role in a new romantic song. In most respects the track, which is proving popular in the largely Pashtun city of Peshawar, is faithful to standard themes of the genre. The lyrics mention rosebuds and wine. Then the repeated chorus: “My gaze is as fatal as a drone attack.” Sitara Younis’ energetic performance of the song had been racking up a healthy number of hits on YouTube before the video sharing site was shut down by the government on Monday, amid rising public anger over an anti-Islamic film.
AFGHANISTAN
UK soldier gives birth
A British soldier has given birth to a boy at the Camp Bastion field hospital. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) in London said mother and baby were in stable condition and a specialist “pediatric retrieval team” would fly out from Britain to care for them during the long flight home. “It is not military policy to allow servicewomen to deploy on operations if they are pregnant. In this instance, the MOD was unaware of her pregnancy,” the ministry said. The Daily Mail, which first reported on the birth, said the woman herself was unaware she was pregnant when her six-month stint in Afghanistan began. Her job in the field involved providing covering fire for troops fighting insurgents.
MYANMAR
‘West Wing’ inspires junta
Former generals have looked to US television for tips on how to build a democracy. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton drew laughter on Wednesday in Washington as she recounted a conversation with the lower house speaker from her historic visit to the country last year. Clinton said: “He said to me: ‘Help us learn how to be a democratic congress, a parliament.’ He went on to tell me that they were trying to teach themselves by watching old segments of The West Wing.” Clinton smiled: “I said: ‘I think we can do better than that, Mr Speaker.’”
ISRAEL
Gaza strike kills two
A strike on Gaza killed two Hamas border guards overnight, Palestinian medics said, but Tel Aviv yesterday named them as “terrorists,” saying one was poised to attack civilians. “Two citizens were martyred and another was wounded in an Israeli air strike on a car in Rafah city,” health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told reporters. Officials in Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry said the air strike in southern Gaza killed two border guards and seriously wounded a third as they were patrolling the frontier with Egypt.
UNITED STATES
Police escape prosecution
The University of California, Davis police officers who doused students and alumni with pepper spray during a campus protest in November last year will not face criminal charges, prosecutors said. The chemical crackdown prompted widespread condemnation, campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after videos shot by witnesses were widely played online. Images of an officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of non-violent protesters became a rallying point for the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, the Yolo County District Attorney’s office said in a statement on Wednesday that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of force was illegal.
UNITED STATES
King writing ‘Shining’ sequel
Readers who have been waiting for more than 30 years to find out what happened to Danny Torrance, the young boy who survived the horrific events of The Shining, can breathe a sigh of relief: Stephen King has finally announced a publication date for his long-awaited sequel. Doctor Sleep will be published on Sept. 24 next year, King has announced — 36 years after The Shining was first published in 1977. King’s Doctor Sleep will take up the story of a middle-aged Dan Torrance, a man who has “been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence,” according to King’s UK publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.
UNITED STATES
Reagan shooter not freed
A federal judge refused to rule on Wednesday whether the man who opened fire at former president Ronald Reagan should be freed, ordering a psychiatric hospital to submit a new plan. District Judge Paul Friedman on Wednesday gave the hospital until Oct. 19 to disclose its plan for John Hinckley, who has been held there for 30 years. Friedman held a lengthy set of hearings on the plan that ended in February. The judge has been reviewing Hinckley’s case to decide whether to expand the conditional release rights of the 57-year-old man, who was declared insane during a 1982 proceeding. He lives at St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
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