UNITED STATES
Trafficking sanctions waived
President Barack Obama has decided not to impose sanctions against Malaysia and Thailand for failing to meet minimum standards in combating human trafficking. In June, the two Southeast Asian nations were downgraded in the Department of State’s annual assessment of how governments around the world have performed in fighting the flesh trade and other forms of exploitative labor. The president can block various types of aid for governments that are blacklisted. However, Washington often chooses not to, based on its national security interests.
SWEDEN
Rape ruling overturned
A man who had sex with a woman while he was asleep was acquitted of rape because he suffers from “sexsomnia,” according to a court ruling obtained on Thursday. The 26-year-old man did not have “the intention” to have sex, the Sundsvall appeal court said, as it overruled the previous two-year-prison sentence. The argument that the defendant “was in a state of sleepiness, unconscious of what was happening, does not seem absurd,” the court said in its judgement, issued on Sept. 8. The decision was mainly motivated by the intervention of a doctor specializing in sleep disorders who said that the defendant could suffer from sexsomnia, a state in which a person can have sex while asleep.
INDONESIA
US man confesses to murder
Police say a US man has confessed that he killed his girlfriend’s mother in a Bali hotel and the girlfriend has acknowledged helping him stuff the body into a suitcase.Heather Mack, 19, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, 21, both from Chicago, were arrested in Bali on Aug. 13, a day after the body of Sheila von Wiese-Mack was found in a suitcase inside the trunk of a taxi at the St Regis Bali Resort. Police chief Colonel Djoko Heru Utomo said yesterday that Schaefer confessed during an interrogation on Monday and that Mack acknowledged her role in separate questioning later this week.
CHINA
Liu Tienan trial to begin
A court will next week try a former deputy head of the nation’s top planning agency on corruption charges, state media said yesterday, after allegations against him were posted online and as the government pursues a high-profile campaign to root out graft. Liu Tienan (劉鐵男) was sacked in May last year. Luo Changping (羅昌平), deputy editor-in-chief of the investigative magazine Caijing, posted accusations online in late 2012 that Liu was involved in a number of illegal activities. Liu’s trial will open on Wednesday in Langfang in the northern province of Hebei, close to Beijing, the China News Service said. Liu is accused of abusing his government positions and taking bribes, the state prosecutor said in June.
PHILIPPINES
Military withdraws troops
The military says the bulk of peacekeepers have pulled out two weeks early from the UN mission in the Golan Heights due to escalating fighting in the region. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ramon Zagala said 244 troops will arrive in Manila on a UN-chartered plane on Friday. A smaller batch of 85 soldiers will arrive on Sunday from the Golan Heights, ending a five-year peacekeeping role that has been marred by Syrian rebel kidnappings and attacks. Zagala said the long-planned withdrawal is not connected with differences between security officials and the UN peacekeeping force commander over a hostage crisis involving the troops in the area.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
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
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