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TOKYO: The US military said Friday it opened a hearing for four US
Marines accused of gang-raping a Japanese woman, even though
Japanese prosecutors decided not to press charges. The case in the
western city of Hiroshima is going ahead amid public outrage over a
separate alleged rape by another Marine on the southern island of
Okinawa, the biggest hub for US troops in Japan. The US Marines said
they held a so-called Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of
a preliminary court hearing, on Thursday and Friday of the four
Marines at their base in Iwakuni, near Hiroshima.
-- AFP
ISLAMABAD: Pakistanis vote on Monday in
elections that are expected to further destabilize the nuclear-armed
nation and determine the future of President Pervez Musharraf, a key
ally in the US-led “war on terror.” The parliamentary poll has
been brutally overshadowed by the assassination of opposition leader
Benazir Bhutto in December, and dogged by widespread allegations of
rigging in favor of Musharraf’s allies. Musharraf, who sacked the
judiciary to pave his way to a second presidential term last year,
is not contesting the polls but faces impeachment if the opposition
wins more than two-thirds of parliament.
-- AFP
SYDNEY: Dozens of Aborigines are preparing
compensation claims after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized this
week for past injustices, an indigenous spokeswoman said Friday.
Those planning to launch court action were victims of the so-called
Stolen Generations policies under which Aboriginal children were
forcibly removed from their families, Lyn Austin told ABC radio.”
I do know that there are 30 or 40 that are going to be doing a civil
action claim” in the southern state of Victoria, said Austin, head
of “Stolen Generations Victoria”.
-- AFP
HANOI: Vietnam’s Northern region is
encountering the longest spell of cold weather which started on
January 14, local press reported Friday. The ongoing spell has
lasted for 32 days, breaking the 31-day record in 1989, Youth
newspaper quoted National Center for Hydrometeorology Forecast
director Bui Minh Tang. During the spell, forecast to end on
February 18, the temperature has sometimes decreased to below 10
degrees Celsius in many northern localities.
-- Xinhua
WASHINGTON: Former presidential hopeful Mitt
Romney endorsed Republican frontrunner John McCain on Thursday,
boosting his one-time rival’s chances of wooing wary conservatives
and unifying the party against the eventual Democratic nominee.
Putting aside their sharp differences, Romney praised the former
Vietnam war prisoner as a “true American hero” and urged the 291
delegates pledged to vote for him to switch allegiance to the
Arizona senator.
-- AFP
PHNOM PENH: The Cambodian government has denied
the accusations in a recent report by Amnesty International (AI)
that the government was implicated in massive forced evictions,
local press reported on Friday. On February 11, AI released the
report to slam the Cambodian government’s complicity in numerous
forcible evictions that threaten 150,000 Cambodians. The Cambodian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation issued a
statement on Thursday, saying that AI’s report attempted to
manipulate facts, exaggerate the situation and invent reality in
Cambodia.
-- Xinhua
DILI: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd vowed
Friday his nation’s troops would stay in East Timor as long as
needed, following assassination bids on the president and prime
minister this week. Rudd jetted into Dili for a half-day visit in
the wake of Monday’s attacks, which critically wounded President
Jose Ramos-Horta and threw the six-year-old democracy into fresh
crisis.
-- AFP
SEOUL: A South Korean firm has received an order
for the world’s first commercial cloning of a pet dog—a request
from a US woman to re-create her beloved former pitbull, a report
said Friday. RNL Bio is charging 150,000 dollars to clone a pitbull
terrier for the California woman using tissue from her dead pet
named Booger, the Korea Times said. It said the actual cloning would
be conducted by Seoul National University while RNL Bio looks after
the business side.
-- AFP
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