BBC IN CRISIS AS CHIEF RESIGNS OVER SEX ABUSE FIASCO
LONDON: The BBC was in turmoil on Sunday after its director-general dramatically quit over a broadcast by the British broadcaster’s flagship news show that wrongly accused a politician of child sex abuse.

George Entwistle’s departure—after just two months in the job—plunges the BBC into fresh crisis after it was engulfed by a scandal surrounding Jimmy Savile, the late BBC star now alleged to have been a prolific sex offender. The 50-year-old’s leadership is the shortest in the BBC’s history. Entwistle announced his resignation the day after the BBC’s flagship news program Newsnight was forced to apologize for wrongly implicating a senior Conservative party figure in abuse at a Welsh children’s home in the 1970s. The director-general said that although he was not aware of last week’s Newsnight report before it was aired, quitting was “the honorable thing to do” since he was the BBC’s editor-in-chief, and ultimately responsible for all output.

MALAYSIAN POLICEMEN ACCUSED OF RAPING INDONESIAN
KUALA LUMPUR: Three policemen have been accused of gang-raping an Indonesian woman at a police station in a northern Malaysian town. Lau Chiek Tuan, a local politician, said that the 25-year-old woman came to his office in the town of Prai just hours after the alleged rape on Friday. Lau said that he held a press conference on Saturday where the woman claimed the three officers in a patrol car stopped a taxi she boarded from a shopping mall in the town of Prai early Friday morning. News reports cited Penang police chief Abdul Rahim Hanafi as confirming that three policemen were remanded for a week Friday night and suspended from duty pending investigations.

BEIJING MARATHON ACCEPTS JAPANESE RUNNERS
TOKYO: Beijing marathon organizers have reversed a decision to refuse Japanese runners, reports said on Sunday. Japanese runners had been barred from taking part in the November 25 event due to concerns for their safety as tensions between the two countries ran high over a territorial dispute. But officials have now updated their website to include “Japan” in the list of applicants’ nationalities, after the Japanese Embassy in Beijing lodged a protest, the leading Yomiuri Shimbun daily and Jiji Press said. The two countries have been at odds over the sovereignty of the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, claimed by China, which calls them Diaoyu. AFP