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Malaysia:Indonesia and Malaysia held crisis talks here on Thursday, with an agreement reached to try to use manmade rain to put out forest fires shrouding Kuala Lumpur and its suburbs in choking haze.The meeting, held at the Medan airport in North Sumatra, was attended by Indonesian Minister of Forestry Malam Sambat Kaban and two Malaysian Cabinet members -- environment minister Adenan Satem and plantation industry and commodity minister Peter Chin. Read here for more
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Malaysia: Commentary -The general assembly of Malaysia's ruling party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), attracts the attention of everyone interested in the past, present and future of the country's politics. However, Malay culture as such is highly political, and this means that the speeches of Malay politicians and the choices of discourse they make are also rhetorical to a large extent. This makes it difficult for analysts to distinguish the static from the message. What is the cake and what is the icing? Read here for more
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USA: Bel Geddes, a quiet, but formidable presence as Ellie Southworth Ewing Farlow, the matriarch of TV's DALLAS, a dominant prime-time soap of the 1980s, died Monday of lung cancer at her home in Maine. She was 82. Bel Geddes acted as JR Ewing's mother. Read here for more
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Pakistan: Pakistan test-fired its first cruise missile on President Pervez Musharraf's 62nd birthday yesterday, in the latest escalation of the arms race with rival India. Delhi declined to comment on the launch of the Babur, a terrain-hugging missile with a range of 310 miles which can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. Read here for more
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UK: The Rolling Stones' upcoming album contains a song seemingly critical of US President George Bush, but Mick Jagger denies it's directed at him."It is not really aimed at anyone," Jagger said today on the TV show Extra."It's not aimed, personally aimed, at President Bush. It wouldn't be called Sweet Neo Con if it was," he added. The song is from the new album, A Bigger Bang, set for release on September 6. Read here for more
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Australia:ANTI-TERRORISM police trying to identify the Australian linked to the latest al-Qa'ida video yesterday contacted the mother of a former soldier who vanished in mid-2001 after travelling to Afghanistan. Mathew Stewart, a private in the army's 2RAR regiment until being discharged on psychological grounds, has been high on a government priority watch-list since he crossed the Iranian border into Afghanistan on August 4, 2001, a month before the attacks on the US on September 11. He had reportedly converted to Islam. Sources confirmed last night that Mr Stewart had not contacted his family on Queensland's Sunshine Coast for at least three years. Read here for more
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USA: A bereaved mother camped outside George W Bush's Texas ranch was given expressions of sympathy from the president yesterday but no pledge of the meeting she is demanding to discuss a US withdrawal from Iraq.Cindy Sheehan has been camped out for the past six days, prompting 50 other anti-war campaigners to join her and the White House press machine to display clear signs of anxiety at the potential public impact. Her son Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed five days after he arrived in Iraq last year. Read here for more
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AUSTRALIA: A senior Nationals senator who made a rude finger gesture in the Senate yesterday while children were in the public gallery has been forced to apologise. Victorian Julian McGauran, the Nationals' whip in the Senate, was caught on parliament's video cameras flipping his index finger at the Opposition side of the Senate, following a narrow vote. A number of school children were in the public gallery when Senator McGauran made the gesture. John Howard said today it was unacceptable and wrong for Nationals Senator Julian McGauran to make a rude finger gesture in the Senate. Read here for more
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USA: Allegations that the US military community had known more than a year in advance that four of the 11 September hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, were part of a US-based al-Qaida cell has sparked outrage among the victims’ relatives and prompted calls by the 9/11 Commission for a review.Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, which investigated the attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people, said that the panel’s members were looking into the allegations. Read here for more
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IRAN: Iran has rejected an IAEA resolution asking that it stop uranium conversion. The UN’s nuclear watchdog agency on Thursday adopted a resolution expressing serious concern over Iran’s resumption of uranium conversion and asked it to stop, the agency said in a statement. Read here for more
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Iraq: Commentary- The Iraqi insurgency has emerged as the new bogeyman for the American military in Iraq. The dictionary meaning of "bogeyman" is: "A cruel or frightening person or creature, existing or imaginary, used to threaten or frighten children." But bogeyman also exists in the imaginations of adults. It includes all things or phenomena that we don't understand, but that might be harmful or deleterious to us. Except in this case the Iraqi insurgency is very real and it aims to kill the American or Iraqi "collaborators". Read here for more
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USA:Shortly after 9/11 President Bush issues order asking CIA, FBI, DOD, NSA, and Cabinet members to restrict clearances greatly and limit all information to 8 members of Congress, effectively eliminating 92 clearances. The Presidential order can be found at Think Progress. Read here for more
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USA: Jack Abramoff,an orthodox Jew, the once-powerful Republican lobbyist involved in ethics allegations facing Representative Tom DeLay, was indicted in Florida on Thursday on unrelated fraud charges involving his purchase of a fleet of gambling boats from a businessman who was slain amid bitter wrangling over the sale. The indictment by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale charges Mr. Abramoff and a business partner with conspiracy and wire fraud in the $147.5 million purchase of the shipping line, SunCruz Casinos, in 2000. They are accused of presenting lenders with a counterfeit document suggesting that they had arranged a $23 million wire transfer to the seller. Abramoff had fled to Israel. Read here for more
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