Australia, Britain and New Zealand may play a role in securing the piracy-prone Malacca Strait but the sovereignty of bordering states would be safeguarded, Malaysia’s defence minister said on Monday. "They are interested in the situation in the Straits of Malacca," Najib Razak said after talks with the armed forces chiefs of Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and Singapore.
It was supposed to protect some of Germany’s most famous antique treasures. But on Sunday embarrassed officials admitted that a security camera on the roof of Berlin’s Pergamon Museum had instead been filming the Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The camera overlooks Merkel’s private flat.
A former Bush administration aide has resigned from his new role as a blogger for the Washington Post after evidence emerged that much of his previous journalistic work had been the result of plagiarism. Ben Domenech (24) had been hired by the newspaper to write what he described as ”a blog for the majority of Americans”.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair caused a stir back home on Monday after suggesting he may have made a mistake by stating publicly that he would not stand for a fourth term in office. Blair’s remarks were made in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
An Afghan court decided on Sunday to stall a controversial case against a Christian facing the death penalty for refusing to renounce his faith, and is likely to release him soon while it reviews the evidence. Under a storm of Western criticism the Afghan government has scrambled for a way to end the prosecution of Abdul Rahman (41) who converted to Christianity in Pakistan 16 years ago.
A nine-year-old mixed-race girl has been beaten and stabbed in the face and neck in St Petersburg, officials said on Sunday, only four days after a teenager was acquitted of the murder of another nine-year-old girl, from Tajikistan, in the city two years ago. The two cases have highlighted racial tensions in Russia’s cities, where immigration and nationalism are on the rise.
Sri Lanka’s cricket authorities are hopeful the tsunami-hit Galle International Stadium will be ready to host a Test match against South Africa in August. ”We have received a clearance from the government to rebuild the stadium,” said K Mathivanan, a member of Sri Lanka Cricket’s interim committee.
Depleted by a wave of arrests, Belarus’ opposition movement is seeking ways to regroup after week-long protests were broken up by a state apparatus determined to defend President Alexander Lukashenko. Authorities at a detention centre outside Minsk finally confirmed that they had in detention Alexander Kozulin, an opposition candidate at the March 19 presidential election.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday sought to dispel views that he is an unquestioning ally of the United States and condemned growing anti-Americanism as a hindrance to closer global ties. Solving the world’s problems needed an "active foreign policy of engagement, not isolation" between countries, the British Labour Party leader told lawmakers.
When a tearful Narend Singh, the KwaZulu-Natal minister for arts, culture and tourism, announced his resignation, he highlighted a politico-moral dilemma. For the first time in post-apartheid South Africa, an elected government official had quit purely because he had been caught with his pants down.