■ THAILAND
Kids kidnapped, one killed
A gang headed by a policeman kidnapped five children as they were being driven to school, killing one girl so she would not identify them, a police official said yesterday. Four kidnappers abducted a six-year-old boy and four girls aged three, six, 14 and 16, in Chachoengsao Province on Friday morning, deputy national police chief Jongruk Jutanond said. The driver, 39, who is related to all of the children, was also kidnapped. The abductors demanded a 3 million baht (US$90,000) ransom from the man’s family. The driver’s 14-year-old niece was found dead on Saturday in Chonburi Province near Bangkok, while his 16-year-old daughter survived with injuries and told police who the captors were. The three smaller children were released on Saturday. The driver and two suspected abductors remain missing.
■ INDONESIA
Food aid plane crashes
An American pilot has died after his light plane delivering food aid in the remote Papua Province crashed, an official from a missionary organization said yesterday. Contact with the plane was lost on Saturday in between the Taive and Nduduk districts, said Norbertus Tunyanan, aviation manager for the Association of Mission Aviation in Wamena, about 275km southwest of the provincial capital Jayapura.
■ AUSTRALIA
Minister to seek clemency
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday he would use upcoming talks in Indonesia to raise the issue of clemency for three Australian drug traffickers held there on death row. The trio are part of the so-called “Bali Nine,” a group of Australians convicted over a foiled plot to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Bali into Australia in 2005.
■ CAMBODIA
Ieng Sary out of hospital
Ailing Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary has been discharged from hospital after one week and returned to the custody of the genocide tribunal, a court official said yesterday. The 82-year-old former foreign minister of the ultra-communist regime was rushed to Phnom Penh’s Calmette Hospital on Aug. 1 after he found blood in his urine. He was taken back to the court on Friday afternoon, tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said. Ieng Sary is one of five top Khmer Rouge leaders detained by the UN-backed court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during their 1975 to 1979 rule. Up to 2 million people died of starvation and overwork or were executed by the Khmer Rouge, which dismantled modern society in its effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia.
■ JAPAN
Food confidence shaken
The government pays close attention to food safety as consumers there are “fussy” unlike in China, which can hide inconvenient facts from its people, the farm minister said yesterday. The nation is “constantly under pressure from consumers ... unlike China, a socialist country, where in principle you do not have to tell consumers anything or you can keep inconvenient things under wraps,” Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Seiichi Ota said. Confidence in food safety has been shaken since last year due to a series of mislabeling scandals and poisoning of consumers who ate dumplings imported from China.
■ BANGLADESH
Bomb hurts three kids
A police official says a homemade bomb has exploded in the capital, wounding three children aged between 5 to 10 years. Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Rezaul Karim says the blast occurred on Saturday while the children were playing with a tin pot that they did not realize contained explosives. Karim says they found the pot near their homes in the city’s South Masundi district. He says the children are being treated mainly for splinter injuries at Dhaka Medical College Hospital and that none are seriously hurt.
■ VIETNAM
Heritage status sought
The government will submit a bid to the UN cultural agency by the end of next month to have the ancient citadel ruins in the Hanoi declared a World Heritage site, state media reported yesterday. Japanese and French archeologists have helped the country prepare the bid for the Thang Long Imperial Citadel site for recognition by UNESCO, the Vietnam News Agency said. The government hopes to have the citadel listed before Hanoi celebrates its 1,000th birthday in 2010, and workers are now excavating palace structures and artifacts at the site, which is closed to the general public.
■ HONG KONG
Three die in blaze, 56 hurt
Two firemen and an elderly women died and dozens more were injured when a blaze in a nightclub spread through a high-rise block of apartments yesterday. The firemen were found dead on the 12th floor of the block in Mongkok District, a fire services spokesman said. A 77-year old female resident also died. More than 200 firefighters were involved efforts to evacuate the building after the blaze broke out around 9am. Dense smoke billowed through narrow corridors, making the rescue hazardous and leading to smoke-related injuries for dozens of residents. At least 57 people needed hospital treatment. The fire was finally put out around 3pm.
■ BRITAIN
Popcorn out of favor
The credits are rolling in for the time-honored cinematic tradition of munching popcorn at the movies — a newspaper reported yesterday that a growing number of cinemas are banning it. A mix of health-conscious cinemagoers rejecting sugar-coated popcorn and disgust at its distinctive smell is steadily spelling “the End” for the snack in some arthouse cinema chains, the Observer reported. It quoted Daniel Broch, the owner of the renowned Everyman cinema in London’s Hampstead district, who recently bought 17 more venues. “It has a disproportionate influence on the space in terms of its overwhelming smell, the cultural idea of it and the operational problems created by the mess it produces,” he said.
■ BURKINA FASO
Dozens killed in mudslide
A mudslide at an illegal gold mine claimed the lives of at least 31 miners, reports said yesterday. The BBC, quoting state-run radio in the West African country, said the accident took place on Saturday in Boussoukoula, in the southwest, following heavy rain. Rescue teams and survivors were digging through the mine, but no survivors were expected, reports said. The accident occurred despite the government ordering all mines to close during the rainy season, which lasts until the end of next month. The hastily dug tunnels are susceptible to collapse during the rains. Some 200,000 people are believed to be working in illegal gold mines in the country.
■ ALGERIA
Suicide blast reported
National radio said that seven people were killed in a suicide bombing in the northern city of Zemmouri. The broadcaster said the blast occurred yesterday morning. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack and the radio station gave no further details. A bombing last week at a police station in another northern city injured 21 people. An al-Qaeda affiliate al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for that attack.
■ IRAN
Four sentenced to death
A court has handed down death sentences to four men including a minor for raping a man after a fight, the Etemad Melli newspaper reported on Saturday. Judges in the northwestern province of East Azerbaijan sentenced the four identified only as Hamid, Ebrahim, Mehdi and Mohammad after they were convicted of raping a man named as Hojat. The sentence must also be approved by the state supreme court. The daily said the four denied the charge and said police had forced them to sign a fake confession. “After the fight … police arrested Mohammad and me and forced us to confess. The officer said ‘write down what I tell you,’” 17-year-old Mehdi was quoted as saying.
■ IRAN
State money for pilgrims
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to finance a pilgrimage trip inside the country as a reward for selected local reporters, a deputy of the president said on Saturday. Mohammad-Jafar Mohammadzadeh, the president’s deputy for communications and press affairs, told official news agency IRNA that on the occasion of “Reporter’s Day,” the president would grant reporters a gift in the form of cash to travel to the religious city of Mashad. The shrine of the eighth Shiite Imam Reza is located in Mashad in the northeast, a popular pilgrimage venue for Shiites. The deputy said 3 million rials (US$316) would be paid to unmarried journalists and 4 million rials to married reporters in order to cover traveling costs.
■ UNITED STATES
Pentagon Papers leaker dies
Virginia police say Anthony Russo, a researcher who helped leak highly classified government papers on the Vietnam War, has died. He was 71. Suffolk police said yesterday that Russo died in his hometown on Wednesday. No cause of death was reported. In 1971, Russo joined military analyst Daniel Ellsberg to leak the highly classified government history known as the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times published the materials, which publicized high-level government communications about the US troop buildup in Vietnam that sometimes contradicted official statements.
■ COLOMBIA
FARC doctor captured
Officials arrested early on Saturday a man accused of providing medical treatment for the leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels, justice authorities said. The man, identified as Cesar Augusto Arango Garcia, is believed to have been the personal doctor for Alfonso Cano, the top leader of the FARC, as well as other members of the guerrillas’ central secretariat, a justice spokesman said. “This man had the use of specialized medical facilities and equipment to treat the leaders of FARC,” the spokesman said. Military intelligence has videos showing the doctor as he gives instructions to a number of FARC guerrillas on how to treat wounds, he said.
■ PERU
Villagers burn suspect
Irate town dwellers in the southern part of the country killed a suspected child murderer by setting him on fire and badly burned a police officer who tried to save him, the state-run Andina news agency said on Saturday. The attack took place on Friday in Pueblo Libre, in remote Chucuito Province where vigilante justice has become commonplace. The report said Jorge Jahuira Cruz, suspected of having killed an underage girl, was surrounded by a throng of townspeople who doused him with kerosene and set him alight. Local police officer Javier Castro tried to save the suspect’s life but was set upon by the crowd who mistook him for a murder accomplice and also set him on fire.
■ CANADA
Blasts force evacuations
A series of explosions at a propane facility in northern Toronto sent balls of flame high into the sky and forced thousands of people from their homes yesterday. Early reports said two people were hurt in the pre-dawn blast. With a number of fires still burning at the round-the-clock facility, police asked people within a 1.6km radius to leave their homes, fearful that two railcars of propane could still explode Amateur video showed an orange glow expanding into a fireball and white smoke. The Canadian Press news agency reported homes had been damaged in the area. The explosion closed one of the country’s busiest highways, the 401 expressway.
■ UNITED STATES
Ex-mistress: no DNA test
The ex-mistress of former senator John Edwards said on Saturday she will not participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her daughter. Rielle Hunter’s lawyer, Robert Gordon, says his client is a private individual who wishes to maintain the privacy of herself and her daughter. Gordon said Hunter was ruling out any kind of testing that could establish who the daughter’s father is. On Friday, Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter in 2006 but denied being the father of her five-month-old daughter. Edwards said he will take a paternity test. A former Edwards campaign staff member professes to be the father.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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