■ INDIA
Four killed in clashes
Troops killed three suspected Islamic militants in clashes in Indian-controlled Kashmir yesterday, while a policeman died in a raid on a home, police said. The police officer and one militant were killed when Indian forces raided a house on the outskirts of Srinagar, said Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force. One militant and one officer also were wounded, he said. The army killed two militants during a gun battle in the village of Nariwan, 360km south of Srinagar, after receiving a tip they were hiding there.
■ PAKISTAN
Christian hostages freed
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said yesterday the government had secured the release of 16 Christian minority members abducted overnight in the North-West Frontier Province. Suspected Islamic militants seized the members of the Christian community in a raid on Saturday night in Peshawar. “We condemn this act and, despite the recovery of the abductees, an enquiry will be held to uncover the faces behind the incident,” state-run Pakistan TV quoted Gilani as saying in a parliamentary session vetting the national budget. The hostages were freed early yesterday.
■ SRI LANKA
Deserters still sought
The military has launched a campaign to track down and arrest up to 12,000 army deserters who did not take advantage of a government amnesty, a spokesman said yesterday. “About 5,000 responded to the general amnesty we had from May 2 to the 30th,” Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. “We are now trying to get at 11,000 to 12,000 deserters who did not respond to the amnesty.” He said most of the desertions had taken place years ago.
■ THAILAND
Insurgents kill four on train
Suspected Muslim insurgents shot dead four people aboard a train as it traveled through Yala Province, police said. Ten gunmen entered the driver’s cabin as the train approached a station in on Saturday night, then shot and killed three civilian employees and a policeman, police lieutenant Noraset Suksri said. The attackers fled when the train stopped after the shooting, the police officer said.
■ CHINA
Tycoon’s appeal rejected
The Jilin provincial Supreme People’s Court yesterday rejected an appeal against a 19-year jail term handed down to a tycoon embroiled in a huge Shanghai social security fund scandal, a financial magazine said in its online edition. Once one of the country’s richest men, Zhang Rongkun (張榮坤) was convicted in April of crimes including bribery, manipulating the stock market and fraudulently issuing bonds, the report in Caijing magazine said. The court accused the former garment salesman — who ranked 16th on the Forbes China Rich List in 2005 — of bribing a former director of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Social Security.
■ INDONESIA
Skate cops hit streets
Skating police officers have hit the roads in a bid to ease serious traffic congestion in Jakarta, a report said on Saturday. Ten police officers circulated through Jakarta’s endless traffic jams during the first-day trial on Friday. The commander in charge of the skating officers was quoted by the Jakarta Post daily as saying that the traffic police on in-line skates were expected to help improve vehicle flow. “None of them fell during their first day on duty,” Sutirto said, adding that some 20 policemen have been trained to use the skates. On the same day, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rode a bicycle with a number of ministers for a “bike-to-work” promotion aimed at reducing air pollution in the capital.
■ CHINA
Twister flattens houses
A tornado tore up 650 houses in Anhui Province in just five minutes on Saturday and damaged nearly 1,000, state media said yesterday. Only one person died. The tornado caused 18.5 million yuan (US$2.7 million) in losses. Forty-five people, including eight seriously wounded, were taken to hospital after the tornado hit in Lingbi County, Xinhua news agency said. One 76-year-old villager died on the way to hospital. More than 20,000 people were “affected” by the tornado and 950 were relocated, Xinhua said.
■ MALAYSIA
Ex-guerrilla can’t go home
Exiled former communist chief Chin Peng, who fought a bloody 12-year guerrilla campaign, lost his latest bid to return home, his lawyer said yesterday. The former secretary-general of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya took legal action after the government rejected his 2003 request to return. But his counsel Darshan Singh Khaira said the bid has now been rejected by the Court of Appeal, who upheld an earlier ruling that Chin Peng show identification papers to prove his citizenship. “We are unable to make sense of the ruling because Chin Peng had already said his identification papers were seized by the authority of the day in the 1940s and so he is unable to produce them,” he added. Born in 1923, Chin Peng won the Order of the British Empire and two medals for helping the British fight the Japanese in Malaya during World War II.
■ RUSSIA
Yabloko leader elected
Opposition party Yabloko chose a new leader yesterday after its longstanding head announced he was standing down, news agencies reported, after the party failed to get into parliament. Grigory Yavlinsky, who rose to prominence as a precocious liberal economist in the Soviet Union’s last months, told delegates at a party congress: “I want to ask you to elect a new chairman … I very much hope the party can exist without me. This in many ways has been my life. One needs to allow people to grow, become leaders.” The party’s congress chose Sergei Mitrokhin, chief of Yabloko’s Moscow branch, as Yavlinsky’s successor.
■ SOMALIA
Aid worker kidnapped
The head of the UN refugee agency in Mogadishu was seized from his home by armed men, the agency said yesterday. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) employee, a Somali national, was taken on Saturday night, said Millicent Mutuli, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Kenya. “We have received reports that the head of the UNHCR office in Mogadishu, a Somali national, has been apparently abducted from his home in the Mogadishu area by unknown men,” she said. Relatives identified the worker as Hassan Mohamed Ali, who lives just outside the capital. “Six gunmen broke into his home last night and took him,” said Khilif Aden, a relative.
■ SPAIN
Refugees storm crossing
About 70 African would-be refugees stormed the most important border crossing from Morocco to Melilla early yesterday, an autonomous city on the Mediterranean Sea, radio reports said. Some managed to reach Spanish territory while others were seized by Moroccan and Spanish police, the reports said. Stone-throwing refugees had injured some police officers. A huge manhunt has been mounted in Melilla. In 2005, several waves of thousands of Africans had tried to storm Melilla and Ceuta from Moroccan soil which led to the deaths of around 14 would-be refugees.
■ IRAN
Newspaper shut down
Authorities have shut down a Tehran newspaper, the official IRNA news agency reported yesterday, after the paper published a story critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stance on Israel. The Press Supervisory Board, which is controlled by hardliners, banned Tehran Today on Saturday after the paper’s editor was summoned to court for publishing material deemed as insulting Ahmadinejad, IRNA said. The news agency did not provide more details. But the announcement comes after the paper published a story on Saturday that said Ahmadinejad’s comments on Israel “seems to have led to a different result — more pressure on Iran and more support to Israel.”
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Parts of army unfit
More than 10,000 British soldiers are unfit for frontline duty as the pressure of supplying troops for years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan takes its toll on the army, the Sunday Telegraph reported. The newspaper said the Ministry of Defence admits that 8,500 soldiers from the 59,000-strong “Field Army” — units such as tank, artillery and infantry regiments — are classified as unfit to serve at the front. When other soldiers classified as unfit from the overall 101,800-strong army are taken into account, the total figure is likely to exceed 10,000, said the newspaper, which is traditionally close to the armed forces.
■ MEXICO
Police nab kingpin’s nephew
Authorities captured a suspected drug smuggler who is the nephew of the country’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, federal police said on Saturday. Police arrested Isai Martinez Zepeda, 25, on weapons possession charges. Martinez Zepeda was carrying a rifle and handgun when authorities found him in a house in Culiacan, Sinaloa — home to a coalition of cartels run by Guzman. Martinez Zepeda said he was the brother of Enoc Martinez Zepeda, who was captured in July 2005 at an army checkpoint in Sinaloa on grounds he was a member of Guzman’s drug gang, police said. Last month, hitmen from a rival cartel killed one of Guzman’s sons. About 40 people opened fire on Edgar Guzman as he stepped out of his armored pickup truck outside a shopping center.
■ BRAZIL
Naomi Campbell no-show
Supermodel Naomi Campbell failed to turn up as scheduled at a runway show in Brazil on Saturday, apparently after her plans were upset by a conviction the day before for assaulting police officers at Heathrow airport in April. Campbell, 38, had been scheduled to appear on the catwalk at the Sao Paulo Fashion Show for next summer’s swimsuit collection by the Rio label Rosa Cha, Globo.com, Terra and other media said. But her sentencing on Friday in London to 200 hours of community service and more than US$5,600 in fines and compensation seemed to torpedo that modeling assignment. The British celebrity had admitted in court to kicking and spitting at the officers as they tried to eject her from a British Airways flight following a row over lost luggage.
■ BRAZIL
Lula declares reservation
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva decreed a new 1.5 million hectare Indian reservation on Friday in the heart of the Amazon rain forest’s logging frontier. The Bau reservation in Para state had been sought by the Kayapo Indians in their ancestral territory since 1994. But resistance from settlers and loggers slowed its official creation. “We are advancing little by little, but we are making the necessary conquests,” Lula said at the signing ceremony in Brasilia.
■ CANADA
Man pleas guilty to tryst
A 32-year-old Belgian man accused of kidnapping a 13-year-old Montreal girl pleaded guilty in court on Friday, local media reported. Vincent Raphael Duval, a resident of Liege, was arrested on June 14 after he was found in a Montreal hotel room with the missing girl. He had initially pleaded innocent to charges of Internet “luring,” kidnapping and sexual touching but changed his plea because of the wealth of evidence against him. Duval will remain in custody until July 3, when he next appears in court. “It was the love of her life, so she wasn’t too happy for us to be there,” Montreal police spokesman Eric Ouimet told reporters after the arrest.
■ UNITED STATES
Police probe Hulk heist
Missing: a 2.4m tall green man wearing ripped purple pants and missing his feet. Police in Lowell, Massachusetts, say a promotional statue for the movie The Incredible Hulk disappeared from its spot in front of a local theater this week. Police Captain James McPadden says the statue is probably in some kid’s bedroom. But he thinks more than one person was involved and that a car or pickup truck was needed to whisk it away. The statue is missing its feet because whoever took it snapped it off at the ankles.
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