International News 4

One shot dead as Indian diamond workers protest

Agence France-Presse . New Delhi

One man was shot dead by a factory guard Sunday and 14 others were injured as thousands of diamond workers demonstrated for higher wages in a gem processing hub in western India, an official said. ‘There was a big mob trying to enter a factory. The guard tried to stop them and he was beaten up,’ administrative official Pradip Shah said by telephone from the city of Bhavnagar in western Gujarat state. ‘Then he opened fire and one man was shot. He has died.’ Shah added that two others were injured in the incident, and one was in serious condition. The official estimated that about 15,000 people working at small diamond workshops in Bhavnagar and its surrounding areas gathered in the streets early Sunday to demand higher wages. The police arrived to restore order but 12 of them suffered injuries after the crowd threw stones at the forces, he said, adding that the protesters had since dispersed. Approximately 60,000 of the area’s half a million people work as cutters and polishers in India’s diamond processing industry, which brings in 12 billion dollars a year.

Israeli PM corruption probe spreads to US

Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem

The Israeli police have sent two senior investigators to the United States to expand a corruption probe linked to embattled prime minister Ehud Olmert, a spokesman said on Sunday. ‘Two senior officials from the police’s fraud department, Lior Rice and Tzahi Habekin, are in the United States for two and a half weeks to continue the corruption investigation involving the prime minister, Ehud Olmert,’ police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. He added that the two detectives would seek to obtain documents from several US banks and companies related to a corruption investigation into financial contributions given to Olmert before he became premier. The corruption probe, the most serious of four pending investigations involving the increasingly unpopular premier, is focused on donations given to Olmert by the Jewish-American financier Morris Talansky. Talansky testified in May that he had given Olmert at least 150,000 dollars in the 14 years before he became prime minister in 2006.

Hindu activists to stay in detention:

Malaysia Kuala Lumpur

Five Hindu activists, including one elected to parliament from behind bars, will stay in detention under Malaysia’s harsh internal security laws, the home minister said. An advisory board recommended the five, arrested after organising an illegal rally last November which police used tear gas, water cannon and batons to break up, remain in indefinite detention, the home minister, Syed Hamid Albar, said on Saturday. The five members of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) were deemed a threat under the colonial-era Internal Security Act, Hamid Albar said after visiting three of the detainees at an ISA detention camp outside Taiping in northern Malaysia. One of the activists, lawyer M Manoharan, was nominated as a candidate by an opposition party in the watershed March 8 general election, and though locked up throughout the election campaign, won his seat with a convincing majority. The opposition made unprecedented gains in that election, wining control of five of Malaysia’s 13 states and coming within 30 seats of taking control of the 222-member parliament. Ethnic Indians make up 7 per cent of Malaysia’s 26 million population, and like ethnic Chinese, have expressed growing resentment against decades-old government policies giving majority Muslim-Malays preferential treatment. Malaysia has long been wary of anything that might upset racial harmony in the multicultural and relatively prosperous Southeast Asian nation.