INDONESIA
Church bomber was wanted
Police say DNA tests have confirmed the man who blew himself up in a church over the weekend was wanted for plotting an earlier suicide bombing. National Police spokesman Major General Anton Bachrul Alam said that Pino Damayanto, who had the alias Achmad Yosepa Hayat, strapped a bomb to his stomach. He then walked into a church in the Central Java town of Solo and blew himself up. He died instantly. Police said yesterday that 22 people were wounded. Hayat was wanted for allegedly helping plot an April suicide bombing in the West Java town of Cirebon that injured 30 police officers praying in a mosque.
JAPAN
Girl dies in exorcism
A 13-year-old girl suffocated after she was strapped down and doused with water by her father and a monk who were trying to expel an “evil spirit,” Japanese police and media reports said yesterday. The two men, 56-year-old monk Kazuaki Kinoshita and the girl’s 50-year-old father, Atsushi Maishigi, were arrested on charges of inflicting injury resulting in the death of Tomomi Maishigi in Kumamoto in the country’s south. “The two are suspected of having conspired in what they call ‘waterfall service’ ... They allegedly strapped the victim to a chair with belts and doused her face with water,” on the night of Aug. 27, a local police spokesman said. She was confirmed dead early the next day when her mother called an ambulance after the girl fell unconscious. “The cause of death is suffocation,” the police official said.
THAILAND
Government won’t sell rice
Thailand’s government has canceled the sale of 300,000 tonnes of rice to Indonesia agreed under the previous administration that left office last month, although Indonesia’s state procurement body said yesterday it had not been informed. “The Public Warehouse Organization signed an MOU in the middle of August, which would have become effective when the minister signed the deal, but I didn’t sign,” Thai Commerce Minister Kittirat Na Ranong said, referring to the body that looks after government stockpiles. “The price does not match the price the government will guarantee farmers, so that deal won’t happen, and we expect Indonesia will understand,” he added.
PHILIPPINES
Militant attack kills six
Muslim militants attacked a remote village on a strife-torn island in the south yesterday and killed six people, the army said. One soldier, a pro-government militiaman and four residents of the isolated village on Basilan Island died in the raid, which was carried out by the Abu Sayyaf group, local military chief Colonel Alex Macario said. “They harassed the community and our forces reacted to protect the civilians and there was fighting. Unfortunately, we had casualties,” Macario said.
PAKISTAN
Crash kills 31 children
At least 31 children and four adults were killed when a bus crashed on the motorway southeast of Islamabad, officials said yesterday. The bus, which was ferrying private school pupils back from a picnic, came off the road and fell into a ravine in Punjab Province on Monday. “Thirty-five people, including 31 children and four adults, have been killed in the accident,” said Naseem Sadiq, a senior administration official in the district of Faisalabad. “The driver, his helper, vice principal and a teacher of the school were also among the dead,” he said.
SYRIA
Activists hack official sites
Two online activist groups said they hacked several official Web sites in the latest tactic to oppose President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime. Online hackers RevoluSec and Anonymous said on Monday they were behind the latest Internet attacks, which targeted the Web sites of several ministries and some major cities. The activists said they replaced the Web sites with caricatures of Assad and messages that read: “Don’t let Bashar monitor you online.” Anonymous said on its Web site that 12 Web sites had been defaced by RevoluSec. Most of the Web sites have since been restored, but some were still down.
UKRAINE
Tymoshenko trial to resume
The trial of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was to resume yesterday after a two-week suspension that saw Kiev come under renewed EU pressure to release the opposition leader. Tymoshenko’s abuse of power trial has set the current leadership at odds with the EU in the heat of crunch negotiations on Ukraine taking the first step toward EU membership. The one-time Orange Revolution leader argues the charges against her are a political vendetta launched against by President Viktor Yanukovych — a charge he denies. EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule warned earlier this month that if Tymoshenko was convicted and jailed, it could deal a major blow to Kiev’s EU plans.
FRANCE
‘Asterix’ creator retires
Albert Uderzo, co-creator of one of the country’s greatest comic book heroes, Asterix the Gaul, said on Monday he was hanging up his pen at the age of 84, but had found several successors to carry on his legacy. The Italian-born artist, who dreamt up the indomitable warrior with his scriptwriter friend Rene Goscinny in 1959, said he was “a bit tired” after 52 years of drawing and that it was time to hand over his creation to younger talent. The announcement came on the day publishing house Hachette celebrated the sale of 350 million Asterix books around the world, making the diminutive hero one of the nation’s biggest-selling exports. “I’ve decided that there should be some continuity and I want it to carry on for generations and generations,” Uderzo told RTL radio.
IRAQ
F-16 deal signed: Mussawi
Baghdad has signed an agreement with the US to buy 18 F-16s and has already made an initial payment as part of the deal, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday. “Iraq has signed with Washington to buy the F-16s,” Ali Mussawi said. “This agreement, for which Iraq has already paid some of the money, is for 18 F-16s in the first phase.” He did not give details on a potential delivery date, or how much of an initial payment Iraq had made, but the Wall Street Journal reported Baghdad had transferred US$1.5 billion, citing officials in Washington.
UNITED STATES
Ex-IMF head cites immunity
Former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is citing diplomatic immunity in asking a judge to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by the New York City hotel maid who says he sexually assaulted her. Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys, who filed the motion in a Bronx court on Monday, said that his position as head of the fund gives him immunity from the civil litigation. Sex assault charges against the 62-year-old French diplomat were recently dismissed after prosecutors said they had lost faith in the woman’s credibility.
UNITED STATES
NYPD officer’s data leaked
Anti-capitalist demonstrators who have camped out in New York City’s financial district for 10 days have published the name, telephone number and family details of a senior police officer whom they accuse of using pepper spray on peaceful female protesters during an Occupy Wall Street march on Saturday. The officer was named in Twitter posts and on activist Web sites as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. The posts also cite an apparent civil rights charge against the officer dating from 2007. YouTube video footage of the incident shows an officer in a white shirt firing the pepper spray at the group of protesters, who are penned in with orange netting by other police. As the officer walks away, two of the women crumple to the ground, apparently screaming in pain. There were several clashes between protesters and police on Saturday, during which there were 80 arrests. Hacker collective Anonymous claimed responsibility on Monday for posting Bologna’s details.
UNITED STATES
Cartel boss’ wife gives birth
The wife of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord gave birth to twin girls at a hospital in northern Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Times. Emma Coronel, the 22-year-old wife of Joaquin Guzman, crossed the border in mid-July and delivered her daughters at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster on Aug. 15, the paper reported on its Web site on Monday. Coronel, a former beauty queen who holds US citizenship, returned to Mexico afterward. Law enforcement officials said Coronel was not arrested because there are no charges against her.
UNITED STATES
Actress kicked off plane
A lesbian actress who starred in TV show The L Word said she kissed a girl — and got escorted off of a flight on Monday for doing it. Leisha Hailey took to Twitter to call for a boycott of Southwest Airlines after a flight attendant told Hailey and her girlfriend that other passengers had complained after witnessing the affection. Her first tweet said: “I have been discriminated against.” She later added: “Since when is showing affection to someone you love illegal?” Southwest responded on its Web site that Hailey was approached “based solely on behavior and not gender.” The airline’s four-sentence response said passengers called the behavior excessive.
VENEZUELA
Rivals using illness: Chavez
President Hugo Chavez said opposition leaders were using his cancer diagnosis as part of a political campaign aimed at portraying him as incapable of governing the country. Chavez said he was recuperating from his fourth and final round of chemotherapy in Cuba last week and preparing for the vote. Some opposition politicians have suggested Chavez was unfit to govern.
MEXICO
Vigilantes’ call rejected
The government said it was investigating videos posted on the Internet in which a gang of masked men vow to exterminate the violent Zetas drug cartel and said it opposed such vigilante methods. The videos have been posted by a group believed linked to the powerful Sinaloa cartel that calls itself the mata zetas, or “Zetas Killers.” In a video posted over the weekend, the group said it was attacking the Zetas because people are tired of the gang’s kidnappings and extortions. The Secretariat of Governance said in a statement on Monday that while the Zetas “should be defeated, that must occur by legal means and never by methods outside the law.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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