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DILI: Hundreds of mourners gathered on Thursday for the
funeral of Alfredo Reinado, the fugitive military leader gunned down
during this week’s dramatic attempt to kill East Timor’s top two
leaders. As security forces hunted Reinado’s accomplices,
black-clad relatives and friends prepared to bury the former army
major and a second rebel killed in the shoot-out. The pair lay in
wooden coffins at the home of Reinado’s adoptive father, while
groups of youths took turns to dig a large hole where the rebels
will be buried at about 0600 GMT.
-- AFP
TIKRIT, Iraq: Gunmen stormed into a house in
Saddam Hussein’s native village in central Iraq and shot dead nine
members of the executed dictator’s clan, police said on Thursday.
“Among those killed were men, women and children. They were
members of the same family,” a police official told AFP. “Only
an 8-year-old child was left unharmed.” The attack in Awja, seven
kilometers (4.5 miles) from the city of Tikrit, occurred during the
night, the official said, asking that he not be named.
-- AFP
HANOI: Bird flu killed a Vietnamese man this
week, the country’s second victim of the H5N1 strain in 2008,
which raised the national death toll from the virus to 49, health
officials said Thursday. The 40-year-old man died of pneumonia and
kidney failure Wednesday at the National Contagious and Tropical
Diseases Hospital in Hanoi after four days of treatment there, said
the hospital’s deputy director Nguyen Hong Ha. “The man from Hai
Duong province died of H5N1 type-A influenza,” said Ministry of
Health Preventive Medicine Department head Nguyen Huy Nga.
-- AFP
YANGON: Myanmar and South Korea are stepping up
cooperation in the education and technical sectors, official media
reported Thursday. The areas of cooperation covers conducting Korean
language course, testing of the language, compilation and
distribution of Myanmar-Korean language dictionary, production of
bio-fertilizer and opportunities for providing educative course to
new-generation farmers, said the New Light of Myanmar.
-- Xinhua
VIENNA: Iran has begun testing advanced
second-generation centrifuges, defying UN Security Council demands
to end its uranium enrichment activities, Western diplomats said
Wednesday. According to the diplomats who are posted to the UN’s
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Iran has begun
real tests of P2 centrifuges with uranium gas with the aim of
producing enriched uranium. Enriched uranium is used to make nuclear
fuel, but can also be used to make fissile material for atomic
bombs.
-- AFP
SYDNEY: Australian media and commentators
Thursday hailed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to Aborigines
for past injustices as marking an historic shift for the nation.
With the word “sorry” splashed across front pages in huge type
along with pictures of weeping and cheering Aborigines, newspapers
devoted entire sections to what the Daily Telegraph called “a
unique and radiant moment.” However, the paper said in an
editorial “the brutal truth is that unless it is followed up with
a program of substance and originality, the aftermath of yesterday
will merely be a hollow symbolism.”
-- AFP
NAHA, Japan: Japan’s southern island of
Okinawa on Thursday demanded the US military rein in the thousands
of troops on the island after a US Marine was arrested for allegedly
raping a girl. The prefectural assembly of Okinawa, which is home to
more than half of the US troops in Japan, unanimously adopted a
resolution asking the US military to take action to improve ethical
training for its forces. The move came on the heels of similar
resolutions passed by local assemblies of Chatan and Okinawa City
where the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl occurred late Sunday.
-- AFP
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