THAILAND
Activist to be freed on bail
Lawyers for a student activist detained for campaigning against a military-backed constitution and in the second week of a hunger strike said he was expected to be released on bail last night. The military government prevented opponents from campaigning against the charter before the vote on Aug. 7 and the Election Commission introduced a law criminalizing any such activity. Khon Kaen University student Jatupat Boonpattararaksa was detained on Aug. 6 for handing out “vote no” leaflets. He went on hunger strike after he was detained and faces charges of violating the ban on campaigning.
HONG KONG
Movie poster sparks furor
A poster for upcoming Hollywood movie Arrival mistakenly featuring a Shanghai landmark on the territory’s skyline was yesterday taken down from the film’s official Facebook page after sparking outrage and ridicule.The error sparked a torrent of comments on social media under the hashtags #HongKongisnotChina and #HongKongindependence. Others called for a boycott of the film, due out in November. The poster showed a giant vertical spaceship over Victoria Harbour with the Oriental Pearl Tower, perhaps Shanghai’s best known landmark, prominently featured in the foreground.
AUSTRALIA
Zoo sells primate music
An orangutan living in Adelaide Zoo has created a jazz riff that his keeper hopes will help raise awareness about the plight of the hairy primates. Pij Olijnyk said he was one day showing the 21-year-old Sumatran orangutan named Kluet some photos and videos on his cellphone. Once Kluet had the hang of swiping the screen, Olijnyk introduced him to an app that creates music, saying: “He loved it... He started just riffing away and playing some amazing stuff, and I just thought ‘this is brilliant,’” the keeper said in a video posted on Facebook yesterday. The zoo is selling the 30-second tune, Give me a Klue, and on which Kluet played the drums and piano, to mark world orangutan day, with all funds raised going to help conservation efforts for the animal.
ISRAEL
Army disciplines soldiers
The army on Thursday jailed one soldier and sanctioned two others after they were filmed apparently dropping a stun grenade alongside a group of seated Palestinians. A video posted online on Tuesday showed an army jeep pulling up next to the men, sitting at the roadside in the northern West Bank village of Kafr Laqif. As the jeep pulls away a flash and smoke can be seen in the road and the men scatter, apparently unharmed. A spokesperson told reporters that the sergeant was jailed for 10 days and the other two soldiers were confined to their base for seven days.
UNITED STATES
Call to fire police officers
Chicago’s police superintendent has called for the firing of seven officers for their response to a colleague’s fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014. Superintendent Eddie Johnson’s decision, announced on Thursday by a Police Department spokesman, comes about two years after Officer Jason Van Dyke fired 16 shots at McDonald, a 17-year-old African-American. The dashboard camera video of the shooting that was released, under pressure, in November last year exposed an entrenched “code of silence” among officers who had sworn to a far different account of the shooting from what the video captured. The seven officers recommended for firing had backed up Van Dyke’s account that McDonald had moved menacingly toward him with a knife, but their story was contradicted by the video of the shooting.
UNITED KINGDOM
London launches Night Tube
All-night services were to begin on the London Underground yesterday, after being delayed for months by a dispute with workers. The Night Tube is seen as a boost for revelers, tourists and shift workers, who on Friday and Saturday nights would be able to travel on the network at any chosen hour. The new service is to begin on the Victoria and Central lines, crossing through the center of London and covering neighborhoods including Notting Hill and Brixton.
UNITED KINGDOM
Nurse faces punishment
A nurse who developed Ebola working in Sierra Leone is facing disciplinary action over allegations she lied about her temperature during health checks on her return. The Nursing and Midwifery Council alleges that Pauline Cafferkey “allowed an incorrect temperature to be recorded” at Heathrow Airport on Dec. 29, 2014, and intended to conceal from Public Health England staff that she had a temperature higher than 38?C. The council on Thursday said that a full hearing on the allegations is scheduled for next month. Cafferkey could lose the right to practice.
GERMANY
Minister favors burqa ban
Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere yesterday came out in favor of a partial burqa ban amid a fierce national debate on integration. “We agree that we reject the burqa, we agree that we want to introduce a legal requirement to show one’s face in places where it is necessary for our society’s coexistence — at the wheel, at public offices, at the registry office, in schools and universities, in the civil service, in court,” he said after a meeting with regional counterparts from his conservative party. De Maiziere told public television that the full face veil “does not belong in our cosmopolitan country... We want to show our faces to each other and that is why we agree that we reject this — the question is how we put this into law.”
ITALY
Extremist imam expelled
The government has expelled a second imam within a week as it seeks to prevent extremist preachers from radicalizing others. Minister of the Interior Angelino Alfano on Thursday announced the expulsion of Khairredine Romdhane Ben Chedli. The 35-year-old Tunisian was recently absolved of terrorism-related charges by the nation’s highest court, but Alfano said his support for extremists rendered him unfit to stay, the ANSA news agency reported. The Ministry of the Interior on Saturday last week announced the expulsion of another imam arrested in the same 2013 sweep as Ben Chedli.
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
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