■ AUSTRALIA
Gillard calls for debate
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard challenged her opponent yesterday to a public debate on the economy in a move one analyst said suggests her campaign for re-election this month is becoming desperate. Gillard threw down the challenge to debate Tony Abbott, leader of the conservative Liberal Party, for a second time during the five-week campaign ahead of a general election on Aug. 21. Abbott, however, refused. “It’s becoming even clearer that with the economy at the center of this campaign ... Mr Abbott should step up to a debate on the economy,” Gillard told reporters.
■ VIETNAM
Activists receive award
An international human rights group has honored six Vietnamese activists for their courage in the face of political persecution in Vietnam. The six were among 42 writers from 20 countries to receive the annual Hellman/Hammmett award, New York-based Human Rights Watch announced yesterday. All of this year’s awardees from Vietnam are activist writers whose work was suppressed by the government in its efforts to restrict free speech, control independent media and limit access and use of the Internet, it said.
■NORTH KOREA
US may blacklist financiers
The US is expected to blacklist three key North Korean figures suspected of handling secret funds for leader Kim Jong-il as part of its new sanctions, a report said yesterday. Washington is devising the measures to punish the North for an alleged deadly March attack on a South Korean warship and to push it to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified government source, said one of the three officials is Kim Tong-myong, head of the North’s Tanchon Commercial Bank. Overall, the US is expected to add 10 to 20 North Korean entities and individuals to its blacklist, the report said.
■NEPAL
Peace agreement threatened
Nepal’s former rebels threatened yesterday to recruit new members for their military wing, raising fears the peace process that ended a decade of fierce fighting may be in jeopardy in the Himalayan nation. The communists’ threat followed an announcement this week by Nepal’s army that it wanted 3,400 personnel to join. New recruits would be sought for the communist party’s military wing because the army violated the peace agreement by launching its own recruitment drive, Chandra Prakash Khanal, deputy commander of the Maoist’s People’s Liberation Army, said. Khanal said it was still to be decided how many personnel it plans to retain. “Recruitment by either the Nepal Army or the Maoist army constitutes a breach of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” the UN said.
■AUSTRALIA
PETA attacks queen’s boots
A pair of high-heeled woolly Ugg boots to be worn by the country’s representative at the Miss Universe Pageant later this month has come under fire on two fronts — tackiness and animal cruelty. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) asked Jesinta Campbell not to wear Ugg boots or a lamb’s wool shrug at the pageant in Las Vegas on Aug. 23 because it was cruel and unethical, using Australian wool sourced from mulesed sheep. Mulesing, a common practice among Australian farmers, involves removing strips of wool-bearing skin from the buttocks of sheep in a bid to reduce a potentially lethal maggot infestation called flystrike.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Extradition overshadowed
A high-profile extradition case between London and Moscow has taken a surprise pause amid an investigation into the mysterious death of a Russian millionaire’s mother, who was found covered in blood in her Moscow apartment. A London court on Monday postponed a hearing into the extradition of Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a 35-year-old businessman who insists he should not be sent back to Russia because someone has murdered his mother and his own life is in danger. Chichvarkin says the extradition request by Russia is politically motivated because he had spoken out against corruption in Russia’s police force.
■IRAN
Offer likely to be refused
The country signaled on Tuesday it would likely reject the Brazilian president’s offer to give refuge to an Iranian woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. The case of 43-year-old Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani triggered an international outcry that prompted Iran to at least temporarily withdraw the stoning part of her sentence. The mother of two could still be hanged, however. Iran says the woman has also been convicted of murder.
■THE NETHERLANDS
Campbell given security
War crimes judges on Tuesday ordered special security measures for fashion model Naomi Campbell when she testifies at the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, barring photographers from catching her entering or leaving the courtroom. The judges say Campbell’s fears for her safety and privacy are legitimate because of her high profile and the intense media interest in her appearance. Campbell was summoned to testify about whether she received diamonds from Taylor after a celebrity-studded dinner in South Africa in 1997.
■DR CONGO
Kidnapped pilot released
An Indian pilot who was taken hostage by rebels has been released unharmed after being forced to walk through the bush for five days, the Indian embassy said on Tuesday. Syed Mazher, 25, a co-pilot for a local airline, was taken hostage on July 24 when rebels attacked his plane after he landed at Walikale airstrip, a bumpy track that doubles as the town’s main road and is the route out for locally mined tin ore. Indian Ambassador Devendra Srivastava said the pilot’s toenails had fallen off as a result of the long bush walks. “It has been a great effort by everyone and we are very grateful to get our man back,” he said, adding that two helicopters from the UN peacekeeping force had flown into the area to assist in the rescue.
■AUSTRIA
Qaddafi funded party: report
Prosecutors said on Tuesday they were investigating after a respected weekly newspaper published excerpts of what it said was a diary suggesting there were transfers of money from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to late far-right politician Joerg Haider’s inner circle. Falter said it had obtained the diary of Walter Meischberger, a former member of Haider’s Freedom Party. Falter is publishing what is describes as excerpts of the diary that mention a transfer of 45 million euros (US$59.4 million) by the Libyan leader in connection with an unnamed Haider confidant and say others visiting Iraq also received millions of euros from Iraq and from accounts belonging to Hussein’s family. It says Meischberger had secondhand knowledge of the transfers.
■UNITED STATES
Wyclef Jean will run: ‘Time’
Haitian-American music star Wyclef Jean will announce his bid for president of Haiti this week, Time magazine reported on Tuesday. Haiti is scheduled to vote on Nov. 28 to elect a new leader to replace President Rene Preval, whose term ends in February. “If I can’t take five years out to serve my country as President, then everything I’ve been singing about, like equal rights, doesn’t mean anything,” Jean said in an interview with Time. Last week he said he was taking the necessary legal steps toward running for president. Many analysts predict Jean would easily win the presidential election. Jean emigrated to the US when he was nine, but has maintained his Haitian citizenship.
■ UNITED STATES
Palin engagement off, again
Bristol Palin has broken off her engagement to Levi Johnston for a second time — less than a month after telling the world she planned to marry the father of her son. The 19-year-old daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was quoted on Tuesday as telling People magazine “It’s over. I broke up with him.” She said her on-again, off-again relationship with Johnston, 20, soured on July 14 — the day the couple announced in Us Weekly that they had secretly become engaged again. Palin said Johnston told her that same evening he might have fathered a baby with another teenage girl. The girl has since denied Johnston is the father.
■UNITED STATES
Man happy dog ate toe
A Michigan man says he’s grateful his dog ate most of his toe while he was passed out drunk. Jerry Douthett says Kiko’s action helped uncover an undiagnosed diabetic condition and led to treatment that could save his life. The Grand Rapids Press reported that the 48-year-old musician knew for a while something was wrong with his foot. He resisted seeking care until giving in to his wife’s pressure. Before going for an appointment, Douthett says he went out drinking, then came home and passed out. When he awoke, the terrier was beside him in bed and lots of blood was where his toe used to be. His wife rushed him to a hospital, where doctors found a bone infection and amputated the rest of the toe.
■UNITED STATES
Toes text plea for help
Police say an Atlanta woman tied to her bed by an armed burglar was freed by police after she used her toes to type a message to her boyfriend. Atlanta police Captain Van Hobbs says the woman’s boyfriend called police dispatchers on Tuesday morning to say she told him she’d been bound since midnight, media reports said. Hobbs says the 39-year-old woman told police the intruder, who had a handgun and wore a ski mask, went through her belongings, then bound her before stealing her car. He says the laptop was on her bed with her and she was able to use her toes to type and contact her boyfriend.
■UNITED STATES
Lady Gaga makes list
Singer Lady Gaga, France’s first lady Carla Bruni and Spanish actor Javier Bardem were chosen by Vanity Fair magazine as among the world’s 45 best dressed people. Also included in the list in next month’s edition were actresses Diane Kruger, Carey Mulligan, Princess Maria of Denmark and US first lady Michelle Obama, along with Samantha Cameron, wife of British Prime Minister David Cameron, filmmaker Martin Scorcese, designer John Galliano, soccer player David Beckham and Argentine polo player Nacho Figueras.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
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