Sat, Jun 12, 2010 page7

• World News Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  ■AFGHANISTAN

  Bomb kills nine civilians

  A roadside bomb blast hit a minivan in the south of the country yesterday, killing nine civilians and wounding eight, officials said. The spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government, Zalmai Ayoubi, said four women and three children were among those who died in the blast. The eight injured people were taken to a hospital run by NATO troops, he said. Violence has spiked recently in the volatile south as Taliban insurgents step up attacks ahead of a planned major operation by NATO forces to secure Kandahar.

  ■MALAYSIA

  Detained man compensated

  A businessman who was held without trial for three years under a tough security law has won a record US$1 million compensation in a verdict welcomed by activists yesterday. The Kuala Lumpur High Court awarded damages to Badrul Zaman Mohamed on Thursday after declaring that his three-year detention from 1991 was unlawful and unconstitutional, state news agency Bernama reported. Badrul was held under the controversial Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial, over his alleged involvement in issuing fake travel documents to foreign workers.

  ■TONGA

  Nuclear drive launched

  The South Pacific island nation should move quickly toward nuclear power as its main source of electricity, its king said yesterday. King George Tupou V said while the energy-hungry nation is planning to produce half its electricity from renewable energy within three years,” nature is dictating that we must look to nuclear energy.” King George said his government is following a US plan aimed at developing small 30-megawatt nuclear plants to curb electricity costs and reduce dependence on expensive imported fuels.

  ■SRI LANKA

  Two-term limit lifted

  The government has approved lifting the two-term limit for presidents in a move that would allow Mahinda Rajapakse to run for office again, an official said yesterday. Rajapakse, 64, came to power in 2005 and has increased his firm grip on power since defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels in May last year. The president’s family hold key positions on the island, with three brothers taking the roles of defense secretary, Speaker of parliament and economic development minister.

  ■PAKISTAN

  US missiles kill 15

  A volley of US missiles killed 15 alleged militants in an extremist stronghold in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, the second such strike in less than 12 hours, officials said. Six missiles were fired in Friday’s attack on a house in a village close to the border, two intelligence officers said. They were not authorized to give their names. Yousaf Khan, a government administrator in the region’s main town of Miran Shah, said 15 alleged militants were killed. He said officers were still gathering information about the identities of the victims.

  ■CHINA

  Man sold son on Internet

  A court has given a 22-year-old man a suspended jail sentence for selling his toddler son on the Internet for 18,000 yuan (US$2,650), state press reported yesterday. The man from Hubei Province sold his two-year-old son to a Beijing couple in April last year after advertising the child online, the Beijing Times reported. Lu sold the child after he split up with the boy’s mother and decided he did not have the time or money to raise him, the report said. But after regretting the sale and reuniting with the mother, Lu in June last year accused the Beijing couple of child trafficking. On Thursday the Beijing court convicted Lu of abandoning his child and meted out a six-month suspended sentence with one year of probation. Judicial authorities ordered the child be returned to Lu, it said.

  ■CHINA

  Counterfeiters arrested

  Police in Hunan Province have arrested four men suspected of forging 210 million yuan (US$31 million) in fake bills in the nation’s single biggest counterfeiting bust, state media said yesterday. The four suspects had been allegedly printing the fake banknotes out of a house in Hengyang city since August last year, the China Daily said. Police first discovered 67 million yuan in fake bills on April 27 in Guangdong Province and traced the money to the house where nine million yuan of counterfeit notes were seized three days later, it said.

  ■CHINA

  Anti-riot exercises held

  Police in Xinjiang have held massive anti-riot exercises to prepare for the first anniversary of ethnic unrest that left nearly 200 people dead, state press reported. Nearly 1,000 police, anti-riot squads, special forces and paramilitary police participated in the joint exercises in the regional capital Urumqi, where the ethnic riots exploded last July, the China News Service said. Photos of the exercises showed riot police using clubs and water cannons against mock rioters, while attack dogs, snipers and machine-gun wielding assault teams were also mobilized.

  ■CHINA

  TV morals to be upheld

  Contestants in matchmaking TV shows will no longer be able to blurt out sexual comments while “morally provocative hosts” have been removed under new government directives. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), China’s media watchdog, issued the guidelines amid concern over racy dating programs that have taken the nation by storm, the official China Daily said. Shows such as If You Are The One have been accused of provoking contestants to spice up the programs, getting them to abuse each other or admit to being gold-diggers, the report said yesterday. According to media reports, SARFT ordered Anhui Satellite TV in eastern China to delete footage of You Are My Destiny contestant Ma Nuo saying, “I would rather cry in a BMW [than smile on a bike],” it added.

  ■ISRAEL

  Palestinians delay election

  Palestinian local elections scheduled to be held in the West Bank next month have been postponed because of divisions in the Fatah party over who would run, Palestinian officials said in Ramallah, the West Bank, on Thursday. Fatah could not agree on a unified list to run in the July 17 election, the officials said, in a sign of the problems faced by a party that once dominated Palestinian politics, but has struggled to maintain its stature since Yasser Arafat’s death. Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the Gaza Strip from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, had already said they would boycott the vote. Abbas is also the leader of Fatah, which was co-founded by Arafat in 1954. Arafat died in 2004.

  ■FRANCE

  Ship casts shadow over visit

  Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Paris on Thursday for a series of talks with leaders there and to open a big exhibition, but a row over a warship sale could put a damper on the visit. Putin told reporters in an interview on the eve of his visit that a deal on the Mistral-class assault ship, now under negotiation for more than five months, is possible only if the vessel comes equipped with cutting-edge technology. Paris has said it will not lump sophisticated radar systems and other sensitive technology into the deal, which would be the first sale of advanced military hardware by a NATO member to Russia.

  ■JORDAN

  Cousin killer gets death

  A man said to have been jilted by his teenage cousin was sentenced to death on Thursday for stabbing her to death during her wedding to another relative, a court official said in Amman. “The court condemned him to death by hanging and sentenced his brother, who has been charged with being an accessory to murder, to 15 years of hard labor,” the official said. In 2008, the man, who was 26, stabbed the 16-year-old with a dagger five times in the chest and stomach at a court in the southern city of Karak where she was being married by a judge, according to the charge sheet.

  ■RUSSIA

  Church challenges evolution

  The Russian Orthodox Church called on Wednesday for an end to the “monopoly of Darwinism” in schools, saying religious explanations of creation should be taught alongside evolution. Liberals said they would fight efforts to include religious teaching in schools. The dominant church has experienced a revival in recent years, worrying rights groups who say its power is undermining the country’s secular Constitution. Senior Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion said at a lecture in Moscow that the theory that one species could evolve into another had never been proved.

  ■GERMANY

  Suspected pirates extradited

  Ten suspected Somali pirates have been extradited from the Netherlands and arrived in Hamburg where prosecutors want to charge them with hijacking a German-owned container ship. Hamburg prosecutor Wilhelm Moellers told reporters on Thursday that the men were handed over to local officials at the Dutch-German border. The nine men and one teenager were captured in the Gulf of Aden on April 5 in a high seas rescue by Dutch Marines that left the MV Taipan ship’s bridge riddled with bullet holes, though nobody was hurt.

  ■VENEZUELA

  Chavez aids kids’ sleep

  President Hugo Chavez is offering parents a cure for children who won’t go to sleep. Have them watch his televised speeches. Following a television appearance on Thursday to extol the virtues of a portable computer his socialist government plans to introduce to public schools, Chavez said youngsters had stopped him in the street to tell him they saw him on television. “It seems that there are mothers here who, instead of putting their kids to sleep with cartoons, put them to sleep with Chavez,” he said. “And the child dozes off and dozes off and Chavez speaks and speaks and speaks. And the child falls asleep,” said the loquacious leader, well known for delivering speeches that can last hours.

  ■GUATEMALA

  Attorney general forced out

  The Constitutional Court has ordered the removal of the attorney general after he was publicly accused of working with corrupt lawyers and drug traffickers. President Alvaro Colom backed Thursday’s decision by the court, which forces Attorney General Conrado Reyes to step down after less than a month in office. Reyes came under the spotlight when the head of an independent UN-backed commission with a special mandate to investigate corruption in the government resigned this week saying it was impossible to work with an attorney general who had links to organized crime. Carlos Castresana, the Spanish judge chosen to lead the UN panel, said Reyes protected lawyers carrying out illegal international adoptions and drug cartels.

  ■PERU

  Van der Sloot awaits trial

  Joran Van der Sloot, a longtime suspect in the disappearance five years ago of a US teen in Aruba, was taken on Thursday to a Lima detention center after admitting to killing a young Peruvian woman. The 22-year old Dutchman was transferred from police custody to await trial over the death of Stephany Flores Ramirez, 21. A police source has said that Van der Sloot confessed to killing Ramirez in his hotel room on May 30 in a fit of rage, saying she used his laptop without permission. “I did not want to do it,” Van der Sloot said, according to the source. “The girl intruded into my private life.” The Dutchman reportedly admitted to breaking Flores’ neck after she learned of his connection to the Aruba case.

  ■UNITED STATES

  Fan jailed over sex ad

  A Philadelphia woman convicted of attempted prostitution for offering to trade sex for World Series tickets has been sentenced to one year of probation. Susan Finkelstein was also sentenced on Thursday to 100 hours of community service. The 44-year-old had been convicted in March after placing a racy online ad seeking tickets to a Phillies-Yankees game in October. Police set up a sting and say she offered sex for the tickets. Judge Albert Cepparulo called Finkelstein’s crime “incredibly stupid,” saying that her ad could have left her vulnerable to a predator. He suggested that she fulfill her community service by speaking about the dangers of the Internet.

  ■MEXICO

  Navy mistakes ‘explosives’

  Officials on Thursday denied claims that the nation’s navy had seized a cache of powerful explosives in a boarding house in the nation’s capital. What marines at first thought was nitroglycerine — a dangerous explosive — turned out to be glycerin — a harmless moistening agent for things like cookies and shampoos — according to the federal Attorney General’s Office.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Man convicted of double murder to be executed tonight

  • 2

    Taiwan start-up hub established in Silicon Valley

  • 3

    TSMC and Nvidia team up on silicon photonics, CEO Jensen Huang says

  • 4

    NT dollar could replace yuan as Asia’s top currency

  • 5

    Hegseth vows to maintain peace in Strait