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SINGAPORE: Posters of an alleged leader of the Jemaah
Islamiah (JI) militant network have been plastered across Singapore
as an intense hunt for the escapee entered a third day Saturday.
Photographs of Mas Selamat bin Kastari, believed to have headed the
Singapore branch of the Southeast Asia-based militant group JI
blamed for a string of deadly attacks, including the bombing of a
Bali nightclub in 2002 that killed 202 people, escaped on Wednesday
from a detention center on Wednesday where he was being held under
the Internal Security Act which allows for detention without trial.
Kastari also allegedly plotted to hijack a plane and crash it into
Changi Airport.
-- AFP
TOKYO: Japan vowed to crack down on crimes
involving American troops based in the country after a surprise
decision by prosecutors not to pursue rape charges against a US
Marine, reports said Saturday. Staff Sergeant Tyrone Luther Hadnott,
who had been accused of raping a 14-year-old, was freed from custody
late Friday after the girl’s family decided not to pursue the
case. The initial case against Hadnott, who was released 18 days
after his arrest on the southern island of Okinawa, triggered
outrage in Japan and re-ignited controversy surrounding the presence
of thousands of US troops.
-- AFP
LONDON: Prince Harry was on his way back to
Britain on Saturday after foreign media leaked the news of his
10-week tour of Afghanistan, the defense ministry in London
confirmed. The 23-year-old royal, a junior officer in the Household
Cavalry, was posted in mid-December to the restive Helmand province
in southern Afghanistan, where British forces are fighting Taliban
insurgents. Harry’s deployment to the war-torn country made him
the first British royal to be sent into combat in more than a
quarter of a century. His uncle Prince Andrew served as a naval
helicopter pilot during the 1982 Falklands War.
-- AFP
PRISTINA: Kosovo police authorities suspended
more than 100 Serb officers on Friday for refusing to obey orders
from a regional police command. A total of 129 Serb police officers
did not show up for work on Wednesday and Thursday in the Gjilan
region in eastern Kosovo. Police spokesman Veton Elshani said the
police command has decided to suspend them “for an indefinite
period.” Serb police, who don’t want to serve under Kosovo
authorities after its unilateral declaration of independence on
February 17, earlier rejected an offer from Kosovo police
authorities to serve in their birth places or Serb-dominated
localities.
-- Xinhua
SAN ANTONIO, Texas: Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama fought Saturday over who would keep America safe and
prosperous, waging a furious political row, as a moment of truth
loomed in their White House battle. In the most explosive moment yet
of the Democratic race, Clinton debuted Friday a negative television
ad, dripping with Cold War-style menace, suggesting Obama would be
found wanting in a dead-of-night foreign policy crisis. Her risky
gambit came as she fought to keep her campaign alive, before two
crunch nominating contests in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday, which could
decide whether her faltering presidential quest can go on.
-- AFP
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Mourners in northwestern
Pakistan were digging graves and burying relatives Saturday after a
suicide bomber killed at least 38 people and injured up to 80,
residents and officials said. Nearly 1,000 people were attending a
funeral for a senior police officer in the town of Mingora in the
Swat Valley late Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up,
security officials said. The police officer whose funeral was in
progress had been killed earlier Friday in the northwestern Lakki
Marwat district in a bomb blast along with three others.
-- AFP
GAZA CITY: A major Israeli assault on the Gaza
Strip on Saturday killed at least 25 Palestinians, including at
least four children, Doctor Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza
emergency services, said. The high death toll makes Saturday the
deadliest day of fighting in several months of near-daily Israeli
raids on the territory. The latest operation began before dawn when
Israeli tanks supported by helicopters pushed into the town and
refugee camp of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, launching at
least 10 missile strikes. At least 55 people were also wounded.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: Despite seven years of efforts to
stamp out the opium crops funding Taliban militants through a flood
of heroin, more Afghans than ever are growing the poppies, a US
government report said Friday. “Narcotics production in
Afghanistan hit historic highs in 2007 for the second straight
year,” said the report released by the State Department.
“Afghanistan’s drug trade is undercutting efforts to establish a
stable democracy with a licit economic free market in the
country.” More than 14 percent of Afghans were involved in poppy
production in 2007, up from 12.6 percent the previous year,
according to the 600-page document that evaluates anti-drug efforts
country by country.
-- AFP
MOSCOW: Russians prepared on Saturday to choose
a replacement for President Vladimir Putin in an election his ally
Dmitry Medvedev is expected to win by a landslide after a one-sided
campaign. The first polls were to open at 2000 GMT Saturday, which
is early Sunday morning in the Russian Far East region of Kamchatka,
some 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) east of Moscow. Opinion polls
forecast Medvedev will win at least 60 percent of the national vote,
easily clearing the minimum 50-percent barrier to win outright and
setting him up to begin a four-year term beginning May 2.
-- AFP
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