■ INDONESIA
Toddler, teen die of bird flu
Bird flu killed a three-year-old boy and a teenager, the health ministry announced, bringing the country's death toll from the disease to 105. The latest victim was identified only as Han, a toddler from Jakarta, who died on Friday at a hospital in the city, radio El-Shinta reported on Saturday. Nyoman Kandun, a senior Health Ministry official, confirmed the report. It was not clear how he was infected. Earlier on Saturday, the Health Ministry said a 16-year-old boy from Central Java Province died of bird flu.
■ INDIA
New arms policy on the way
The government plans to purchase billions of dollars worth of military hardware in the next five years and will soon relax strict rules on arms imports, officials say. A new Defense Procurement Policy (DPP) will be unveiled by April, Defense Minister A.K. Antony said on Saturday. Many of the major players in the race to grab a share of arms deals see the current so-called offset policy part of the DPP as restricting growth. The policy stipulates foreign firms selling products to India must re-invest up to 50 percent of the total amount through tie-ups and services in the country.
■ THAILAND
Politician assassinated
A gunman opened fire inside a mosque in the restive south, killing a Muslim politician who was among dozens gathered for evening prayers, police said yesterday. The gunman entered the mosque in Pattani Province on Saturday evening and joined about 40 others who were kneeled in prayer. He then pulled out a gun and shot Madori Buraheng, a 40-year-old town official, at close range before fleeing on a motorcycle, army spokesman Colonel Akara Thiprote said.
■ AUSTRALIA
E Timor negotiations panned
East Timor's government should reconsider its policy of negotiating with rebel fighters after a botched assassination on the president, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday. East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta was shot during a shoot-out with rebels at his Dili home last Monday. The events prompted Canberra to boost its troop deployment to its northern neighbor. Smith said "President Ramos-Horta himself was very strongly of the view they should try to get a negotiated settlement." "That's something now the East Timorese government may wish to reflect upon, given what's occurred," he said.
■ THAILAND
Residents protest noise
Residents near Bangkok's new international airport have threatened to disrupt air traffic by launching fireworks and balloons to protest over a delay in compensation for noise pollution, reports said yesterday. Community leaders said they had no choice but to carry out the threat this week after a series of failed talks with Aviation authorities and the operator of Suvarnabhumi Airport, the English-language daily Nation said. Suvarnabhumi airport opened in 2006. Residents near the airport complain about sleep deprivation because of noise pollution and demanded that the government help pay for soundproofing of their homes or for eventual relocation. The aviation authorities started giving residents sleeping pills to try to settle the dispute, which only prompted locals to accuse the authorities of being insincere.
■ DENMARK
Committee cancels Iran trip
The parliament's foreign policy committee said on Saturday it had cancelled a trip to Iran next week over demands it apologize for a controversial Prophet Mohammed cartoon in Danish newspapers. "The Iranian parliament wanted our delegation to present an official apology to Iran. We said `absolutely not' ... We cannot do that, it would be a violation of freedom of expression," the committee's deputy chairman Jeppe Kofod said. Newspapers chose to republish the cartoon after police uncovered an alleged plot in the Scandinavian country to kill the cartoonist.
■ LEBANON
Troops intervene in scuffle
Army troops intervened to restore order as pro-government and opposition supporters engaged in fist fights and beat each other with sticks in a Muslim neighborhood of Beirut late on Saturday, police and TV stations reported. Gunfire was heard in the melee but it was not clear who fired and there was no immediate word on casualties from the police. At least two persons were shown injured in the footage. Such clashes have become common in recent weeks as tensions escalate between rival camps.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Teacher heads to China
A British teacher who was jailed in Sudan for calling a teddy bear Mohammed is to take up an 18-month post teaching English in China, a friend said on Saturday. Gillian Gibbons, 54, was arrested on Nov. 25 and sentenced to 15 days in prison for insulting religion by allowing children at an English school in Khartoum to name the stuffed animal after the Muslim prophet. The imprisonment of Gibbons, a mother of two, led to a diplomatic stand-off until two British Muslim lawmakers traveled to Africa to negotiate her early release after eight days and a presidential pardon.
■ NETHERLANDS
Iran speaks out against film
Iran has urged The Hague to prevent the screening of a film in which a right-wing populist lawmaker plans to lay out his view of the Koran, a news agency in the Islamic Republic said on Saturday. Iranian Justice Minister Gholamhossein Elham expressed concern about what he called the making of an offensive film against the Koran in a letter to his Dutch counterpart Ernst Hirsch Ballin, the Fars News Agency said. "We must not allow the freedom of speech ... to be used as a cover for assaulting the sensibilities and exalted moral and religious values which are respected by all of humanity," Elham said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Trump troubled by coat
US property tycoon Donald Trump has fallen foul of ancient Scottish heraldic law for failing to register a coat of arms to promote a luxury golf resort he hopes to build, British media said on Saturday. The Court of the Lord Lyon, which deals with Scottish heraldry, has launched an inquiry into Trump's use of the design, which has appeared on promotional material for the complex in northeast Scotland. Newspapers quoted the Lyon clerk as saying the arms -- which include lions, a knight's helmet and a spear-wielding fist -- had not been registered. The Lyon Court, which dates back to the 14th century and requires all coats of arms to be registered, charges about £900 (US$1,765) to register a shield and more than £1,300 for adding a crest.
■ UNITED STATES
Killing suspect arrested
A 39-year-old man with a history of mental problems has been arrested in the slaying of a New York City psychologist attacked in her office with a meat cleaver, police said. David Tarloff was arrested on Saturday after police matched him with three palm prints found at the crime scene, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Tarloff made statements incriminating himself during a 25-minute interrogation before questioning was stopped after he asked for a lawyer, Kelly said. Therapist Kathryn Faughey was slashed 15 times with the cleaver and a knife in her Manhattan office last Tuesday evening. A colleague of Faughey who went to her aid was badly injured.
■ UNITED STATES
Boys find live grenade
Eight-year-old Sidney Mathis and his friend found a live, World War II-era hand grenade while searching for buried treasure with a metal detector in Pace, Florida. The pair had found nails, bolts and a toy car by sweeping the detector over a field near their apartment complex when Sidney's father Chris Mathis arrived home on Thursday to find the boys about to put the grenade into a bucket of water. He grabbed the grenade and held it outside the window of his car as he drove away from the complex before having second thoughts. "I hit a bump and that's about the time I realized moving the grenade wasn't the brightest thing to do," he said. Two members of an Air Force explosives unit from a nearby air base took the grenade and destroyed it on Friday.
■ UNITED STATES
Wheelchair-tipper released
A Tampa, Florida, deputy who was videotaped dumping a paralyzed man out of his wheelchair onto a jailhouse floor has been released from jail after posting bail. Charlette Marshall-Jones was booked into the same jail where she worked early on Saturday after turning herself in. She is accused of tipping 32-year-old Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair. A videotape of the incident has been widely circulated by TV stations and over the Internet. She was charged with one count of felony abuse of a disabled person and released after posting US$3,500 bail.
■ UNITED STATES
Walken wins Hasty Pudding
Christopher Walken sang a song from Hairspray and spoofed a comedy skit to earn Harvard University' s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year award. Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the nation's oldest undergraduate drama troupe, presented the actor with the award on Friday. Before the presentation, Walken, who serenaded John Travolta in the musical film version of Hairspray, sang to a Harvard student dressed in drag. Walken said he was ``amazed and thrilled'' by the honor.
■ UNITED STATES
Diplomat faces sex charges
Foreign Service officer Gons Nachman was charged in US District Court of using his status to pressure female visa applicants in Brazil for sex. Nachman, 42, was charged with misuse of his diplomatic passport, making false statements and possessing child pornography. He was ordered jailed pending a detention hearing scheduled for tomorrow. The affidavit said that Nachman had pursued sexual relationships with attractive female visa applicants while stationed in Rio de Janeiro and that he admitted to having sexual relationships with two women. Court records indicate that Nachman was ordered to stop performing his duties as a Foreign Service officer in September.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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