CHINA
Tibetans protest on holiday
Reports say several hundred Tibetans have protested in a province bordering Tibet on National Day, but there was no violence. Radio Free Asia said yesterday that the protest happened after officials took down a Tibetan flag and a picture of the exiled Dalai Lama on Saturday, the 62nd anniversary of communist rule. A notice on a Web site of the Tibetan government-in-exile said the protest was in Seda City, Sichuan Province. It had no further details. The area was hit by unrest after deadly riots rocked Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, in March 2008.
CAMBODIA
Flash floods kill hundreds
The government says flash floods have killed at least 150 people in the nation since August. The floods are the worst to hit the country since 2000, when 374 people were killed. Government disaster agency spokesman Keo Vy said yesterday that flood waters along the Mekong River and other places have damaged 271,000 hectares of rice fields, as well as 904 schools and 361 Buddhist temples. Hundreds of people have been killed across Southeast Asia, China, Japan and South Asia in the last four months from prolonged monsoon flooding, typhoons and storms. The government in Thailand says heavy floods there have also killed 206 people since August.
RUSSIA
Dozens detained after rally
Police say they have detained dozens of anti-gay protesters and gay rights activists during a gay pride rally in central Moscow. Saturday’s protest was one of the few gay rights events sanctioned by authorities. In recent years, several attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow and other cities have been blocked by police, Russian Orthodox Church activists and soccer fans. Moscow police spokesman Anatoly Lastovetsky said 40 people were detained on Saturday. He told reporters that police were “finding out whether [the detained] were part of the rally or the people who tried to thwart it.” During the rally, several men were seen trying to pelt the protesters with tomatoes and unfurling posters with pejorative remarks about homosexuality.
INDONESIA
Terrorist suspect caught
The anti-terrorism squad has arrested one of the country’s most wanted Muslim militants for allegedly plotting suicide attacks. Local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Lufti Martadian said yesterday that Beni Asri was captured without a fight on Friday near his parents’ house in Solok, West Sumatra Province. He says that Asri was flown to Jakarta hours after he was arrested for allegedly helping plot a suicide bombing in a church in the Central Java town of Solo on Sept. 25 that injured 22 worshippers. The 26-year-old was one of five men wanted for allegedly plotting an April suicide bombing that injured 30 police officers praying in a mosque in the West Java town of Cirebon.
CHINA
Bus crash toll climbs
The death toll from a bus crash on the first day of the National Day holiday has climbed to 16, the National Tourism Association said yesterday. It said the crash a day earlier in Hubei Province also left one person missing and 17 others injured. There were 34 people on the bus. The association said in a statement that the bus plunged into the Xiangxi River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. It did not give a cause for the accident.
VENEZUELA
Chavez backs Qaddafi, Assad
President Hugo Chavez on Saturday reiterated his support for ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, calling them “brothers.” “I ask God for the life of our brother Qaddafi ... No one knows where Qaddafi is; I think he went to the desert,” Chavez told official television VTV. The 57-year-old leader has defended Qaddafi since the start of the uprising against his regime in February, accusing NATO of using the conflict to gain control over Libya’s oil. Chavez has refused to recognize Libya’s new interim leadership, ridiculing its UN representative Ibrahim Dabbashi as a “puppet” and a “dummy.”
UNITED STATES
Shooting suspect killed
A man suspected in the fatal shootings of a city councilman and a county land trust official was shot and killed on Saturday after a massive manhunt in the redwood forests of Northern California. Sheriff Thomas Allman said Aaron Bassler was shot seven times about 10km east of Fort Bragg after he was sniffed out in the forest by a bloodhound tracking a nearby burglary. Three members of Sacramento County’s SWAT team were in the trees above Bassler and when they saw him coming toward them on a timber trail, they shot him. Allman initially said Bassler raised his gun at the deputies as they approached, but later said he raised his rifle as he was falling from the gunfire. Bassler, 35, had been sought since Fort Bragg councilman Jere Melo and a second man separately confronted him while investigating reports of an illegal marijuana farm outside of town. Police said Bassler was cultivating about 400 poppy plants and was holed up in a makeshift bunker when he fired on the 69-year-old Melo and a coworker who escaped and called for help.
UNITED STATES
CIA contractor charged
A CIA contractor freed by Pakistani authorities after the families of two men he killed in a shootout agreed to accept a US$2.34 million “blood money” payment was charged on Saturday after authorities said he got into a fight over a shopping center parking spot. Deputies responding to an altercation between two men outside an Einstein Bagel in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, took Raymond Davis into custody on Saturday morning, Sheriff’s Lieutenant Glenn Peitzmeier said. He was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors. Peitzmeier said the victim, who was not identified, refused medical treatment at the scene.
UNITED STATES
FTAs could move ahead
President Barack Obama may send to Congress as early as today three long-stalled free-trade agreements (FTA) with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, a senior administration official said on Saturday. The agreements have been awaiting congressional approval for more than four years. Obama has been holding off sending them to Capitol Hill in hopes of getting stronger assurances that a worker-retraining program known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) would be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The Democratic-controlled Senate recently passed a revamped version of the half-century-old TAA program. Obama has worked over the past year to address his fellow Democrats’ concerns about the pacts, which were each signed under former Republican president George W. Bush. A new problem emerged when Republicans balked at renewing certain TAA program benefits that expired early this year.
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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