■INDONESIA
Journalists flout film ban
Journalists yesterday vowed to defy a ban on the screening of Australian movie Balibo, saying the film depicting alleged war crimes by Indonesian forces in East Timor is educational. The film directed by Robert Connolly and starring Anthony LaPaglia was banned without explanation on Tuesday hours before it was due to premier in the country at a private showing for the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club. It depicts the alleged murder of five Australian-based journalists by invading Indonesian forces in the East Timorese border town of Balibo in 1975. Indonesia claims the reporters — two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander — were killed in crossfire and has refused to cooperate with an Australian war crimes investigation launched this year. Alliance of Independent Journalists head Nezar Patria said its members had been invited to a screening last night at Utan Kayu Theatre in Jakarta, regardless of the ban. The film, which opened in Australia in July, was also scratched at the last minute from the program for the Jakarta International Film Festival starting next week.
■VIETNAM
Mass grave found
Authorities in central Vietnam have found a mass grave containing the remains of 25 communist soldiers killed during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Trong Luyen says the remains were recovered on Wednesday along with personal effects like sandals, belts, caps and hammocks. Construction workers discovered the remains while digging a drainage system in Quang Ngai city. The remains are believed to be those of communist commandos killed while attacking a South Vietnamese prison during the Tet Offensive in 1968.
■UNITED NATIONS
Disabled key to poverty work
The UN warned Wednesday that attempts to halve world poverty will be doomed unless the world’s estimated 650 million disabled people are pulled out of neglect and unjust discrimination. In an appeal to mark International Day for Persons with Disabilities yesterday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said disabled people formed “one of the world’s largest and most neglected groups.” About 20 percent of the world’s poorest people have some kind of disability, while 90 percent of disabled children in developing countries do not attend school, UN data showed. “These statistics shock our conscience,” Pillay said. “Unless persons with disabilities are brought into the development mainstream, it will be impossible to cut poverty in half by 2015,” she said.
■INDONESIA
Jet passengers injured
At least six passengers were injured yesterday when they jumped off a jet as it prepared to take off from Bali, falsely believing the plane was on fire, an airline official said. The Batavia Air Boeing 737 carrying 148 passengers and six crew was about to leave the terminal at the island’s main airport, en route to Surabaya city in East Java, when the incident happened at 11:45am. “Some passengers saw smoke coming out from the plane’s right side. They screamed and shouted that the plane was on fire,” airline spokesman Eddy Haryanto said. “That caused other passengers to panic and rush to the emergency exit. They forced open the door and jumped off the plane,” he said. Six injured passengers were sent to hospital, the spokesman said, adding their condition was unknown. “There was no fire, it was only smoke from the exhaust and that’s normal as the pilot had just started up the engines,” Haryanto said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
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
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
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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