Terrorists eye Asia economic conference
Six shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles reportedly have been smuggled into Thailand ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference summit later this month.
President George Bush (al-Qaida's top target) and China's Hu Jintao (cracking down on Islamic separatists in Xinjiang province) Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (sending troops and money to help the U.S in Iraq) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (blamed for the Chechen war) are all slated to attend the Bangkok conference Oct. 21-22.
Hambali, the leader of the Islamic terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, a close al-Qaida ally, told interrogators after his arrest on Aug. 11 attacks on targets in Bangkok were planned, and Thailand's Premier Thaksin Shinawatra last week confirmed a Jemaah Islamiyah plot to attack an Israeli El Al airliner.
The smuggled missiles, reported stolen from a Cambodian arms depot, are Russian-made SAM-7 Strela 2s, the same type used to attack an Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya, last year.
Bush can probably rest easy; Air Force One contains sophisticated anti-missile defenses that can handle the obsolete Strela-2. Other leaders may be more nervous as their aircraft fly in over the hard-to-police and crowded suburbs of Bangkok.
On the bright side, each of the 21 heads of government who will attend the summit is to receive an ultra-luxurious silk and gold thread shirt valued at $2,000 made in the village of Tha Sawang. It takes five weavers working for a month on a single loom to create 3 meters (10 feet) of the special fabric.
EU Parliament: One German's enough!
European Parliament conservatives picked Spain over Germany to help put the final touches on the European Union constitution at a meeting this week in Rome.
The Parliament was allocated two representatives on the Inter-Governmental Conference, one from each of the two dominant political coalitions. The Socialists picked Germany's Klaus Hanesch. The conservatives (known as the European Peoples' Party) have been battling hard over the choice between Spain's Mendez de Vigo and Germany's Elmar Brok. One vote last week resulted in a dead heat.
They were both qualified, Brok as a veteran parliamentarian who had worked with previous IGCs, and the Spaniard as a member of the inner circle who produced the first draft of the constitution that the IGC will tackle. In the end, de Vigo came through after an unholy alliance of other conservatives from France, Britain and Italy decided that two Germans were one too many.
Osama nixed in Jordan
Jordan's Parliament has recessed without debating a provisional law banning parents from giving their children offensive names, Osama included.
The delegates did not approve or disapprove the bulk of the government's provisional bills passed over the past two years when Parliament did not meet.
One of those new provisional laws bans parents from giving "offensive names that violate Jordanian norms and tradition" to their newborns. Osama tops the list, the draft amendment says "after the Arab satellite channels carried extensive news and focused commentaries on some who named their sons Osama bin Laden after the events in Afghanistan, which harms the country's image and its foreign relations."
Hoping for endorsement in a Parliament that includes the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition lawmakers, the ban is balanced to include the names of former Israeli prime ministers: Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Shamir and Binyamin Netanyahu.
Landmine ban comes too late in Greece
Greece and Turkey have formally ratified the international treaty banning landmines, but it came too late for seven illegal immigrants believed to be Pakistani.
The immigrants were killed Sunday as they tried to enter Greece illegally by crossing the border at the Evros River, which is bordered by minefields in places. The remains of the seven dead were retrieved by Greek specialist mine-clearing troops.
The Greek general staff reports 31 people have been killed by mines on the Greek-Turkish border in the last three years. And two months ago 23 Pakistanis drowned in the river.
The treaty is formally known as the "Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction."
