|
JAKARTA: Former Indonesian dictator Suharto’s condition was
deteriorating after the 86-year-old was hospitalized in Jakarta,
doctors said Saturday. Suharto was suffering complications
after his heart became too weak to pump blood properly around his
body, causing large amounts of swelling, hospital director Djoko
Rahardjo said. Doctors have managed to reduce the swelling in
Suharto’s “limbs, but not his stomach,” Rahardjo told
reporters as Suharto’s family and officials visited the ailing
former president.
-- AFP
BEIJING: A survey by the municipal government
shows that per capita power consumption of civil servants in Beijing
decreased by 10 percent from 2004 to 2007. The average power
consumption of each civil servant from November 2006 to October 2007
amounted to 3,072.5 kilowatt-hours, according to the Beijing
Municipal Construction Committee and Beijing Municipal Commission of
Development and Reform. The two commissions conducted a survey
in 36 office buildings belonging to 20 state organizations, Beijing
Daily reported.
-- Xinhua
YALA, Thailand: Suspected separatist insurgents
have shot dead a Muslim man and wounded two others on the
anniversary of the start of a bloody rebellion in Thailand’s far
south, police said Saturday. The 43-year-old villager was
killed in a drive-by shooting Friday evening near a mosque in Yala
province, where two security officials were also wounded in a
shooting and a bomb attack, local police said.
-- AFP
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan: British anti-terrorism
police are expected Saturday to begin examining evidence connected
to the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto,
officials said. The Scotland Yard team is meeting senior
Pakistani police and has been briefed on what they know about the
slaying of the two-time prime minister in a gun and suicide bomb
attack here last week, officials said.
-- AFP
SINGAPORE: A Singaporean artist said Saturday he
had ended a five-day hunger strike in support of Malaysian Hindu
rights activists detained under a tough security law. “I’m
finished,” Seelan Palay told AFP by phone from outside the
Malaysian High Commission, where he had been fasting since Monday.
Palay, 23, said he planned the fast to last exactly five days—one
day for each detained member from Malaysia’s Hindu Rights Action
Force. The five are being held under Malaysia’s Internal
Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial.
-- AFP
GUANGZHOU: One person was killed and eight
others injured in a car explosion in south China’s Guangdong
Province on Friday night, according to the local government.
The car exploded about 8 p.m. on Friday after the driver, named Li
Qu, stopped it near a nightclub in the downtown of Shanwei City,
said an official of the city government. The accident left the
four passengers and four passersby injured, three seriously.
The driver died early Saturday in hospital.
-- Xinhua
SEOUL: International efforts to put an end to
North Korea’s nuclear program appeared to hit a snag Saturday
after Pyongyang defiantly insisted it had lived up to its end of a
six-party disarmament deal. North Korea said it had been
forced to slow compliance with the deal reached in February as the
other parties to the agreement, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia
and the US had not held up their end of the bargain. It
accused the other parties of failing to deliver promised energy aid,
and also said the United States had not “honored its
commitments” to remove Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors
of terrorism.
-- AFP
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire: Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton will clash face-to-face on Saturday for the first
time since he won the first 2008 White House nominating contest and
threw her campaign into turmoil. Three days before the second
leg of the presidential selection marathon in New Hampshire, the
rivals will trade shots as surviving Democratic and Republican
hopefuls take part in unusual back-to-back televised debates.
In the Republican debate, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney
will look to hit back at ordained Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee,
who pulled off a stunning triumph in Iowa, while surging John McCain
also hopes to shine.
-- AFP
TBILISI: Georgians started to cast votes in the
snap presidential election Saturday morning, during which former
President Mikhail Saakashvili is vying for the nation’s top job
with six other candidates. Some 3.3 million eligible voters of
the 4.7-million population is expected to vote at more than 3,500
polling stations, including more than 40 polling stations abroad,
according to the electoral authorities. Opinion polls showed
that Saakashvili and business tycoon Levan Gachechiladze are
frontrunners among the seven candidates.
-- Xinhua
NAIROBI: US envoy Jendayi Frazer on Saturday
kicked off her mediation effort in Kenya, where 250,000 people have
been displaced and at least 360 killed by post-electoral violence.
The US assistant secretary of state for African affairs held talks
with Raila Odinga, the opposition candidate who claims incumbent
President Mwai Kibaki rigged his way to reelection in the December
27 polls. Frazer was also expected to meet Kibaki in a bid to
defuse the worst security and political crisis in Kenya, a key US
ally and usually a beacon of democracy and stability in the restive
east African region.
-- AFP
KATHMANDU: Nepal receives annual remittances of
over 100 billion Nepali rupees (about $1.5 billion) from about one
million Nepalese working abroad, but this money comes with the heavy
price of two Nepali laborers dead in foreign countries with each
passing day, The Kathmandu Post said on Saturday. According to
data made available to the daily by labor recipient countries, a
total of 754 Nepali workers died in those countries in 2007.
This is a sharp rise of 37 percent over the previous year, according
to official records. Qatar, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates are the four most popular destinations for
Nepali workers. And the death toll is also high in these
countries where more than 97 percent of them are employed.
-- Xinhua
BOGOTA: The rebel group Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) confirmed on Friday that a boy in a
state-run orphanage is the son of hostage Clara Rojas, the
Bolivarian News Agency said on its website. The news agency
quoted a FARC statement as saying that the boy named Emmanuel Rojas,
whom the rebels had claimed to be in their custody, is in the care
of Colombia’s Social Welfare Institute. The confirmation
from the FARC came after DNA tests showed that the boy’s DNA
matched that of Rojas’ relatives, suggesting a high possibility
that the boy is the son of the woman hostage.
-- Xinhua
|
