AUSTRALIA
Whistle-blower loses appeal
Army whistle-blower David McBride, who leaked allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan to the media, yesterday lost a court bid to have his prison sentence reduced. The three Australian Capital Territory Court of Appeal judges unanimously rejected the 61-year-old former army lawyer’s appeal against the severity of a five-year and eight-month prison sentence imposed a year ago. His “oath obliged the appellant to discharge his duties ‘according to the law,’” the judges said.
Photo: AP
UNITED KINGDOM
Thames Water fined
Thames Water yesterday was fined a record ￡122.7 million (US$165 million) over pollution and improper dividend payments, a regulator said. Water watchdog Ofwat said that an investigation into “how the company was managing its treatment works and wider wastewater network uncovered failings that have amounted to a significant breach of the company’s legal obligations.”
Photo: AP
PANAMA
State of emergency imposed
The government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in one province after US banana giant Chiquita Brands laid off about 5,000 workers following a strike that had ground its production to a halt. The declaration allows the government to speed past bureaucratic hurdles to address economic or social crises quickly. Chiquita, which employed more than 7,000 workers, laid off about 5,000 of them last week for what it called unjustified abandonment of work.
Photo: EPA-EFE
MALAYSIA
Minister steps down
Minister of Economic Affairs Rafizi Ramli yesterday said that he was resigning from his Cabinet post after losing his position as deputy president of the People’s Justice Party (PKR) to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s daughter in a party poll. “My defeat in the recent PKR party election means I no longer have the mandate from my party to translate the people’s agenda — championed by PKR — into government policy,” Ramli said in a statement.
THAILAND
Armies clash on border
The army and Cambodian soldiers yesterday briefly fired at each other in their disputed border area, the two sides said. The Cambodian soldiers entered a disputed area and its soldiers approached the area to negotiate, but due to misunderstanding, the Cambodian side opened fire and the army retaliated, it said. Cambodian Army spokesman Mao Phalla said the Cambodian troops were conducting a routine patrol along the border when the other side opened fire. The clash lasted about 10 minutes until local commanders spoke to each other and ordered a ceasefire. Both sides said they had no casualties or no immediate information on its casualties.
IRAN
Man executed for spying
Tehran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, the judiciary said yesterday. “After identification, arrest and judicial proceedings against Pedram Madani, who was spying in favor of the Zionist regime, and following the complete process of criminal procedure and the final confirmation and upholding of the verdict by the Supreme Court, he was brought to justice and executed,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online reported. Madani was accused of transmitting classified information and holding meetings with Mossad officers abroad, including in Brussels, the report said.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
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