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JAKARTA: Japan’s Prince Akishino and his wife
Princess Kiko met with Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono Saturday as they began a week-long visit to the world’s
most populous Muslim nation. Prince Akishino, Emperor
Akihito’s second son, is scheduled to attend the celebrations
marking 50 years of Indonesian-Japanese diplomatic relations in
Jakarta on Sunday. The 42-year-old prince will stay in the
country until January 24.
--AFP
SYDNEY: A militant anti-whaling
group on Ssaturday said it attacked a Japanese whaling vessel with
“stink bombs”, frustrating the hunt, only an hour after two of
its activists were freed from the harpoon boat. Captain Paul
Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel, the Steve
Irwin, said his crew resumed its actions against the Japanese fleet
shortly after the two men were handed to an Australian customs boat
on Friday. The Japanese company which owns the whaling
vessels, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd, condemned the butyric acid
attacks on its ships that it likened to the work of terrorists.
--AFP
CANBERRA: National security
strategy faces a radical shake-up, with home-grown terrorists
recognized as a greater threat to Australia than foreigners, the
Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported on Saturday. The
federal government is considering putting more resources into
building relationships with vulnerable local communities rather than
solely pumping more funds into intelligence agencies, the newspaper
report said. Sources said that as part of the overhaul, the
government would reassess threats to Australia, both external and
internal. It would then determine the most effective ways of
using the nation’s resources, whether military, policing or
funding, to meet those threats.
--Xinhua
BANGKOK: The People Power Party,
which supports Thailand’s ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra
officially announced Saturday, that it has established a six-party
coalition to form a new government. The announcement caps a
dramatic political turnaround in Thailand, with Thaksin’s allies
now set to take power 16 months after his ouster in a bloodless
coup. Under the coalition the PPP-led government would control
about two-thirds of the 480 seats in parliament, said Samak, most
likely to be the next prime minister.
--AFP
BEIJING: Four church leaders have
been released from a Chinese labor camp after their sentences were
lifted following help from Christian rights association China Aid,
the group said on Saturday. Wang Caizhang, 34, Ma Zhao, 35,
Yang Situan, 39, and Du Dongliang, 32, were sentenced in August last
year to 18 months reeducation after being caught holding Sunday
worship in Hubei province, China Aid said.
--AFP
DHAKA: The Bangladeshi caretaker
government has received tremendous response from donors and
development agencies to its appeal for building some 2,000 cyclone
shelters in the country’s coastal belts. The donors and
agencies have made such proposals after the November 15 cyclone
“Sidr” that battered the country’s southern coastal districts,
leaving nearly 3,500 people dead, local newspaper The Financial
Express reported Saturday.
--Xinhua
BANGKOK: Seven bodies have been
found floating in a reservoir in western Thailand, police said
Saturday, adding that they were apparently Myanmar migrants who
drowned while trying to slip into the country. The corpses of
five women, one man and a young boy have been picked up since
Thursday in the Srinakrin dam’s reservoir, not far from the border
with Myanmar, police said.
--AFP
ISLAMABAD: Security forces in
Pakistan’s tribal area arrested around 50 militants during an
overnight operation, Dawn News reported Saturday. The security
forces captured 40 miscreants in Wana town and the Chagmalai area of
Wana in South Waziristan, said the report. Some ten bodies of
miscreants were recovered from Chagmalai where a clash between
militants and security forces occurred Friday.
--Xinhua
NASIRIYAH, Iraq: Street battles
between members of a shadowy messianic sect and Iraq’s security
forces in two southern cities killed at least 66 people, mostly
cultists, police said on Saturday. At least 35 members of the
Shiite doomsday cult were killed in the southern port city of Basra
and 18 in Nasiriyah, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of
Baghdad, in the battles that broke out on Friday, police officials
said. The other casualties were nine police and four
civilians.
--AFP
YAOUNDE: The Central African
Republic’s Prime Minister Elie Dote and his government resigned
Friday, according to news reaching here. “The president has
just received and accepted the resignation of the prime minister and
of all his government,” a spokesman for President Francois Bozize
told national television. Dote’s resignation came amid a
general strike over salaries that began earlier this month, causing
a social crisis in the country.
--Xinhua
LAS VEGAS, Nevada: Democratic
rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and top Republicans Saturday
braced for voters’ judgments in the next contests in the tense
2008 White House nominating marathon. Democratic activists
were due to take part in caucuses in the gambling state of Nevada,
which Clinton hopes will extend her momentum after her victory in
the New Hampshire primary last week. Republicans meanwhile are
facing off in South Carolina, in a key party primary, which has
Senator John McCain battling ex-Arkansas governor and ordained
Baptist minister Mike Huckabee for first place, according to latest
polls.
--AFP
WASHINGTON: A bomb threat forced
the World Bank to close its buildings in Washington Friday, but no
bomb has been found. The bank said on its website earlier in
the day that it received a bomb threat and that all its buildings in
Washington would be closed for the day as a precaution. After
a thorough search of the buildings, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) said it found no explosives.
--Xinhua
BEIRUT: Hassan Nasrallah, the
Hezbollah chief and one of Israel’s most wanted men, appeared in
public for a Shiite religious event in the Lebanese capital on
Saturday for the first time in more than a year. Nasrallah has
been at the top of Israel’s wanted list since his Iranian- and
Syrian-backed Shiite militant group fought a deadly month-long war
against the Jewish state in the summer of 2006.
--AFP
BRASILIA: Brazil’s Health Ministry announced on Friday that 31
people in the country have been hospitalized for overdoses of yellow
fever vaccine. Two of the affected, from Brasilia, took the
vaccination twice in an interval of 10 days and are in a critical
condition, the ministry said.
--Xinhua
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