UNITED KINGDOM
Terrorism suspects charged
Six men have been charged with alleged involvement in a terror-bomb plot, police announced on Sunday. The arrests on Sept. 19 of the six Birmingham-area men were part of a “major operation” by the West Midlands counterterrorism unit, the West Midlands police department said. Four were charged with preparing for an act of terrorism, and two more with failing to disclose information, the police said. One of those two was also charged with terrorist fundraising. All six, who are aged between 25 and 32, are alleged to have been involved in planning between Dec. 25, last year and Sept. 19 of this year to prepare or help others prepare to commit acts of terrorism, the department said.
SOUTH KOREA
Man jailed for defecting
A man has been jailed for a foiled attempt to defect to North Korea, a court official said yesterday, in an unusual reversal of the prevailing trend. The man in his 50s, surnamed Oh, visited the North’s consulate in Shenyang, China, in October last year to seek asylum, according to a court record. North Korean diplomats turned Oh back and urged him to campaign at home. He then traveled in China’s border areas considering ways to sneak into the North before returning home, where he was arrested. Seoul’s Western District Court said the former college caretaker had held a grudge against society after being fined by a Seoul court for beating colleagues in 2007.
JAPAN
Three DPJ aides convicted
A court has convicted three former aides to a ruling party powerbroker in a political funding scandal, dealing a blow to his status in the struggling party’s public image. Ichiro Ozawa engineered the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) historic rise to power in 2009, but was charged with political funding violations this year. He will face a separate trial beginning on Oct. 6 over the case. The Tokyo District Court yesterday gave three of Ozawa’s former aides suspended prison terms for conspiring not to register a US$5.2 million loan from Ozawa to his funding body in a 2004 Tokyo land deal. Ozawa’s party membership has been suspended over the scandal, but he remains a hugely influential figure.
NORTH KOREA
PM visits China
Prime Minister Choe Yong-rim is in China for a visit that highlights Pyongyang’s economic dependence on its giant neighbor and comes as Beijing is pressing for new talks on ending the North’s nuclear programs. Choe is scheduled to meet with top Chinese officials, including Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶). His trip follows the signing of agreements on development zones along their border that bind the North ever more closely to China.
AUSTRALIA
Minors attempting suicide
Asylum-seekers as young as nine have attempted suicide while in immigration lock-ups, the nation’s top medical body said yesterday as it slammed detention of youngsters as akin to “child abuse.” The Australian Medical Association said it was worried about the mental health of detainees, and that children were suffering from depression and self-harm. “We are aware of a nine-year-old child who was recently admitted for trying to commit suicide,” Peter Morris from the association’s Northern Territory branch told an inquiry into the detention system, the Australian reported.
FRANCE
Socialists claim victory
The left has claimed victory in elections for the Senate, which has been controlled by the right for more than 50 years, dealing a blow to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy. Official results of Sunday’s vote to fill half the Senate seats in an indirect election were not yet public, but Senate Socialist group head Jean-Pierre Bel said the left won 24 to 26 new seats. It needed 23 seats to gain a majority. Bel did not say whether his figures were projections. However, Senate President Gerard Larcher, a conservative, said that the left “made a real push ... larger than I thought.”
TURKEY
Iran to help fight Kurds: PM
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday signaled a joint military offensive with Iran against their common enemy: Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq. Erdogan said both countries were working together and determined, and that there was “no question of any postponement,” a clear reference to a possible joint military operation against the main Kurdish rebel base on Qandil Mountain, which sits on the Iraqi-Iranian border deep inside northern Iraq. “I regret to say this, but there will be a price for it,” he added, a reference to possible military losses in a cross-border offensive.
FRANCE
Botanist Sarkozy wowed wife
President Nicolas Sarkozy bewitched future wife Carla Bruni with his “incredible” knowledge of flowers and the pair now enjoy a “very quiet life,” the first lady told the BBC World Service. “He knows all the Latin names for flowers,” Bruni told Newshour radio show guest presenter Christine Ockrent in an interview due to be aired today. “I was really impressed ... walking around the garden in the Palais of the Elysee, he was giving me all these details about tulips and roses and I said to myself: ‘My God I must marry this man, he’s the president, and he knows everything about flowers as well, this is incredible!’”
CAR
Rebels kill six: official
A rebel attack on a rival group and civilians has left at least six people dead, a Central African Republic military official said on Sunday. Rebels of the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace fired a missile at a vehicle carrying former rebels from the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) and civilians, the official said in Bria, the country’s main diamond mining hub. The nation has been rocked by a recent outbreak of fighting between the rival armed groups vying for control over diamond mines. An official in Ouadda said the victims’ bodies were in “very bad condition and have been buried in a village near Bria.” The wounded were taken to Bria by a group of UFDR members.
TURKEY
Hercules statue returned
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts returned a piece of a Hercules statue to Ankara after two decades of negotiations, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. Turkey claimed the top of the Weary Heracles, Greek for Hercules, was stolen from an archeological site in the Mediterranean and smuggled into the US. The bottom half of the statue has been displayed at the Antalya Museum in Antalya. Erdogan said he brought the top of the statue on his plane back home on Sunday after the museum agreed to return it as a “goodwill gesture.” The 1,900-year-old marble statue shows the tired hero leaning on his club. It stands about 1.5m high.
UNITED STATES
Utah laws protested
Thousands of people stripped to their underwear and ran through Salt Lake City to protest what they called the “uptight” laws of Utah. Undie Run organizer Nate Porter says the goal of the event on Saturday was to organize people frustrated by the conservative nature of the state’s politics. Nudity was prohibited by organizers. Participants donned bras, panties, nightgowns, swimwear or colorful boxer shorts — and some added political messages by expressing support for causes like gay marriage on their chests, backs or legs. Porter estimates 3,000 people participated in the run, which began in downtown Salt Lake City and circled past the state Capitol building about 1.6km away.
BRAZIL
Piranhas attack beachgoers
Authorities in a state in the northeast are scrambling to assuage the public after piranhas sunk their teeth into about 100 beachgoers, UOL Noticias reported. The problem has been worst at the main beach area in Piaui State; authorities said they need to act fast to reduce piranha overpopulation. Last weekend, at least 100 bathers were treated at the hospital in Jose de Freitas, not far from Terezina, Piaui’s capital, after being bitten on the heels or toes at the local beach. “Since they have no predators, piranhas have started attacking people on the beach,” said Romildo Mafra, a local environment official.
BRAZIL
Live woman sent to morgue
A woman in her 60s being treated in hospital for pneumonia was given up for dead by her attending physician, and sent to the morgue too soon, O Globo newspaper reported on Sunday. The doctor felt no vital signs, ran tests and pronounced her dead. She was sent to the morgue and spent at least two hours in a plastic body bag. “I went to give my mom one last hug, and I could feel that she was breathing. I screamed out — my mom is alive and they all looked at me like I was crazy,” Rosangela Celestrino, the patient’s daughter, told the paper. “Not only did I have to go collect my mom from a cold storage drawer at the morgue, but when I got there, I find her still breathing.” Hospital officials said the patient, Rosa Celestrino de Assis, had two strokes and had been on assisted breathing. Hospital director Manoel Moreira Filho said the mistake was identified at about 10pm, and the patient was immediately intubated and put back on life support.
UNITED STATES
Bake sale sparks row
A California student group has sparked a racism and sexism row over plans for a bake sale in which people are charged according to their ethnic background and gender. Campus Republicans at the University of California, Berkeley, say critics have overreacted to their event planned for this week, which they insist is a protest over affirmative action. The group’s Facebook page lists the price of baked goods at the sale according to race: US$2 for whites, US$1.50 for Asians, US$1 for Hispanics, US$0.75 for blacks and US$0.25 for Native Americans. “US$0.25 FOR ALL WOMEN” it added. Berkeley College Republican president Shawn Lewis said the idea of the “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” was to highlight a legislative bill to let California public universities consider race and gender in their admissions process. He said they planned to go ahead with the sale today despite protests and threats.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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