 |
| Saturday, May 27, 2000, Chandigarh, India  
|
32 killed in fresh Maluku violence JAKARTA, May 26 — A fresh outbreak of Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia’s North Maluku islands has left at least 32 dead and 52 wounded, the state Antara news agency and church sources said today. Pickering in Pak with thorny agenda
Russian planes bomb Chechen positions |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Uproar as Putin scraps film ministry Further violence likely ahead of Peru poll Frostbite beats boy’s bid to climb Everest Hijacker killed
while bailing out
|
|
32 killed in fresh Maluku violence JAKARTA, May 26 (AFP) — A fresh outbreak of Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia’s North Maluku islands has left at least 32 dead and 52 wounded, the state Antara news agency and church sources said today. The church sources said the violence took the form of a savage sea-borne attack by Muslims yesterday on Christians in the Galela and Tobelo sub-districts in the northern part of North Maluku’s Halmahera Island. Many residents in the two subdistricts had fled the area, Antara said, quoting an operations officer at the North Maluku Security Control Command, Major Puguh. Antara, which earlier quoted military sources as saying 11 had died, later gave a figure of 32 dead, including casualties among the attackers. An official with the Synod of Halmahera Churches, speaking on condition of anonymity from Tobelo, told AFP on the phone, that 26 villagers were killed in the attack. “Twenty-six Christian residents in Mamuya village were killed in an attack around 5 a.m. yesterday. Based on reports from eyewitnesses, the attackers were a mixed group of the Jihad Force and local Muslim residents from Soasio village,” the official said. “The attackers came in speed boats and were armed with semi automatic weapons ... some of the local Muslim residents had come from the nearby Soasio village,” he said. “At least 52 persons were also wounded or injured in the attacks which lasted about three hours. All of them have been taken to the Bethesda hospital here. |
|
Pickering in Pak with thorny agenda ISLAMABAD, May 26 (AP) — US Under Secretary of State Thomas R. Pickering started a two-day visit to Pakistan today armed with an agenda packed with thorny issues like the nuclear non-proliferation, terrorism and Pakistan’s troubled relations with India. The visit comes at a time of strained relations between Pakistan and the USA, the two cold war friends, who have been struggling to define their post-cold war relationship. Washington has been critical of Pakistan’s support for groups waging a bloody secessionist movement in Kashmir. The USA also assailed the latest round of military rule and issued fresh warnings against further nuclear tests. It has also accused Pakistan of not using its influence with neighbouring Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the bombing of its embassies in East Africa in 1998. For its part, Pakistan says the USA has been a fair-weather friend, embracing Pakistan during the war in the eighties in Afghanistan encouraging Islamic militants of the region to fight against the invading Soviet soldiers and then turning its back on the area and becoming Pakistan’s biggest critic. A US embassy official said Mr Pickering was expected to meet the Chief Executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf. |
|
‘Trial of century’ ends with convictions IT was the gambling world’s “trial of the century” and it ended in tears this week in Las Vegas. The former girlfriend of casino millionaire Ted Binion and her lover were jailed for life with a recommendation that they serve at least 20 years for a plot straight out of the pages of pulp novelist James M. Cain. Sandy Murphy, (28), who modelled costumes for topless dancers, wept as she made a personal plea for mercy following her conviction for the murder of Lonnie “Ted” Binion (55). “I am sad for all the hopes and dreams, the wedding that will never be and the children that will never come,” she told the jury who made their sentence recommendation on Thursday. Her co-defendant, Rick Tabish, (35), a small-time crook and partner of the dead man, also wept as he begged the jury: “Please let me get out while my parents are still alive.” Members of the dead man’s family had also wept as they urged the jury to press for a life sentence without parole. Mr Binion was the son of the founder of Las Vegas’s famous Horseshoe Club which had a reputation for never turning down a bet. The family business helped him amass a US$56m fortune. But he also acquired heroin and alcohol habits which led to his disbarment from the casino and his eventual meeting with Murphy in 1995 at Cheetah’s nightclub in gambling’s capital. “He was drunk and I was drunk,” said Murphy later. Sandy Murphy had just ended a relationship and Mr Binion was on the point of splitting up with Doris, his wife of 15 years. She was also hard up, having just blown US$13,000 on the tables at Caesar’s Palace. The couple were together for nearly three years, to the disapproval of other members of the Binion clan, and Murphy seemed prepared to tolerate Mr Binion’s violence towards her when he was drunk or drugged up. Then on September 17, 1998, Murphy dialled 911 to tell the emergency services that she had found Mr Binion dead at his home. There was some heroin paraphernalia beside the body and an empty bottle of the prescription drug Xanax. It had all the appearance of an overdose. The local police spokesman described it at the time as “an ingestion error in regards to medication”. It turned out that Mr Binion had bought 12 balloons of heroin from a dealer the previous day. But the night after the death police found Rick Tabish at one of Mr Binion’s properties in the remote Nevada town of Pahrump on the road to Death Valley. Tabish, who had been hired by Mr Binion to build a secret storage for US$ 14m in silver coins which Mr Binion had accumulated, was using an excavator to try to remove the silver from the vault. Asked by the police how he came to be trying to remove a vast cache of silver coins at 3 a.m., Tabish assured them that he was just following Mr Binion’s instructions to remove the silver in the event of his death and pass it on to his daughter before anyone else got their hands on it. Initially, the police seemed to believe that Mr Binion had died from an intentional or unintentional overdose but the Binion family, always suspicious of Murphy who stood to inherit around US$ 1.4m and a mansion, hired a private detective to investigate. Eventually, the district attorney’s office decided that Murphy and Tabish had conspired to kill Mr Binion and get their hands on his money, money that Tabish knew was now hidden away in Pahrump. The plot had echoes of James M Cain’s “Double Indemnity” and had an equally unhappy ending for the perpetrators. The pair were arrested and accused of having forced Mr Binion to swallow the heroin and Xanax before suffocating him. “Take Sandy out of the will if she doesn’t kill me tonight,” Mr Binion was said to have told his lawyer the day before he died. “If I’m dead in the morning, you’ll know what happened.” — Guardian News Service |
|
Russian planes bomb Chechen positions NAZRAN, (Russia), May 26 (AP) — Russian planes bombed Chechen rebel positions near a key mountain village today, while militants shelled Russian checkpoints in the Chechen capital, Grozny, officials said. Russian forces were trying to dislodge the rebels who control part of the road between the village of Zhani-Vedeno and the regional administrative centre Vedeno in the southern mountains, according to military officials. The Russian forces, having taken low-land Chechnya, are chasing guerrilla bands in the forests and ravines of the rugged southern part of the rebellious region. Warplanes flew 20 combat missions since yesterday, the military said. Planes also bombed targets in the Nozhai-Yurt region, near the border with Dagestan, where rebels have sometimes taken refuge. Russia claims to have crushed organised resistance, but rebel attacks persist. Two Russian checkpoints were shelled overnight in the republic’s capital Grozny, which Russian forces took about four months ago, and several servicemen were wounded, military officials said. Russian losses have reached 2,304 since fighting in the North Caucasus region of Russia began in August, Gen Valery Manilov, First Deputy Head of the General staff, told a news conference. However, a report from Moscow quoting chief Chechen spokesman Movladi Udugov said Chechen fighters killed at least 65 Russian soldiers in two separate clashes southeast of the rebel republic. Udugov told AFP in an interview that the Chechen attack on an army base of 250 soldiers in Bet-Mokh, a village in the Zhani-Vedeno region, left 45 Russians and two Chechens dead. |
|
Uproar as Putin scraps film ministry RUSSIA’S film-making community is in uproar over President Vladimir Putin’s decision to abolish the film ministry— a move they claim will cripple the struggling industry. Leading film directors this week held an emergency meeting to protest that Russia’s cinema tradition would not survive without the support of the powerful state committee for cinematography (Goskino) to lobby for it. As part of a government streamlining drive ordered by Mr Putin this week, Goskino is to be swallowed up by the Ministry of Culture. “Everything will go to pieces, there will be a total collapse,” Sergei Lazaruk, Goskino’s deputy chairman, warned on Thursday. The head of Russia’s independent film studio, Mosfilm, was also adamant that the decision would have dire consequences. “The abolition of this ministry just when Russia’s film industry is beginning to come back to life can only be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to destroy the country’s cinema,” he said. Russia’s most famous and politically influential director, Nikita Mikhalkov — who made the Oscar-winning “Burnt by the Sun” — is to lead a group of prominent film industry figures to appeal to Mr Putin next week, in an attempt to get him to rethink. Protesters are worried that without the expertise concentrated in the walls of Goskino, the quality of Russia’s films will drop. There is also concern that the modest profits the industry has recently begun to make will be siphoned off to subsidise other cultural projects. “Five years ago when Russian film was destitute and half dead, no one paid any attention to Goskino,” Mikhalkov said. The government had noticed it only because “the industry has started to be profitable,” he said. No independent-minded film makers would have campaigned for the preservation of Goskino 20 years ago. The organisation has its roots in a 1919 decree by Lenin, ordering the film industry to be harnessed to the state’s crusade for ideological enlightenment. In the Soviet era, Goskino’s official remit was to “strengthen the role of cinema in the building of Communism” and to “help in the active promotion of Marxist-Leninist views among the Soviet people”. Censors in the script-reading room of Goskino’s Moscow headquarters spent all day scanning new texts for ideological suitability. The organisation was disbanded in 1991, but after several months of chaos film-makers decided they needed a central coordinating body and Goskino was resurrected to allocate government subsidies and to organise film distribution. It has worked since then in an administrative support capacity, championing the interests of film-makers. After a barren stretch, the film industry is beginning to see a revival. Domestic enthusiasm for cinema is growing; in the mid-1990s, 97 per cent of Russians did not visit the cinema even once a year. Last year, 35 per cent ventured out to the cinema at least once. In last year’s budget, the government allocated US$15.4m to the film business. — Guardian News Service |
|
Further violence likely ahead of Peru poll LIMA, May 26 (Reuters) — Peru faced the prospect of further violence and a weakened government today as the Andean country headed toward a presidential election which the Opposition is boycotting and monitors declared unfair. In a move which further threatens the international legitimacy of Sunday’s vote, an Organisation of American States (OAS) mission said last night that it would not perform ground monitoring of an election process it dubbed “far from free and fair.” The OAS also said it would not carry out an independent vote count, a procedure intended to allay fears of fraud by verifying the official government count. The terse statement followed violent clashes between the police and protesters against President Alberto Fujimori, who demonstrators claim is trying to win his re-election on Sunday with the help of government-sponsored fraud. Thousands of students and workers held running battles with the police yesterday, throwing paving stones at the government palace. The police dispersed the demonstrators with tear gas. At a late-night rally yesterday, Mr Fujimori’s Opposition rival Alejandro Toledo reiterated his promise to boycott the election and promised to continue campaigning until “clean elections” were held. “Alejandro Toledo isn’t leaving the campaigning because we still have a long road ahead,” Mr Toledo bellowed to thousands of his supporters in downtown Lima. “Until the end”. Mr Toledo’s call for a delay has been echoed by international monitors, including the OAS and the US-based Carter Centre, but Peru’s National Election Board, the country’s top election body, voted to hold elections on May 28 as planned. “According to international standards, Peru’s election process is far from being considered free and fair,” the OAS mission said in one of its strongest statements yet. It said the election’s characteristics, including a biased media and the use of government funds to bolster Mr Fujimori’s campaign, ‘’do not uphold an election process which will represent the authentic will of the people.’’ The OAS will keep only a core team in Peru to issue a final report on the vote. |
|
Frostbite beats boy’s bid to climb Everest KATHMANDU, May 26 (DPA) — Just 68 metres from the summit, a 14-year-old schoolboy had to abandon his bid to become the youngest climber of Mount Everest because of exhaustion and frostbite, the Nepalese Tourism Ministry said yesterday. The ministry said Temba Tseri Sherpa of Kathmandu reached Hillary Step at an altitude of 8,780 metres, but had to turn back to the base camp “due to exhaustion and frostbite in his fingers’’. Hillary’s Step is a 21.34 metre rock close to the summit and only one person can climb it at once. It is considered the last major hurdle to a successful climb. Last year, another Nepalese schoolboy, 15-year-old Arvind Timilshina, had made a similar attempt, but was beaten back 98 metres from the summit because of lack of bottled oxygen. |
|
Hijacker killed
while bailing out
MANILA, May 26 (AP) — The man who hijacked a Philippine Airlines jet but bailed out when his demand was rejected has died, the authorities said today. Soldiers recovered the body of Augusto Lakandula, who jumped out of the plane at 6,000 ft, in a heavily forested area after residents reported seeing a man in a parachute landing yesterday, Gen Jose Lachica said. His body was found last night in the town of Real, Quezon province, about 70 km east of Manila, by local officials, but because Communist rebels operate in the area the recovery was delayed until today. The bag of money hijackers took from the others aboard the plane, was not found with win, General Lachica said. |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh Tribune | In Spotlight | 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 120 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
ISLAMABAD:
Gen Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive of Pakistan, gestures as he speaks to
reporters on Thursday in Islamabad. Musharraf said he would return the country to democratic rule in three years in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling.
— AP/PTI
