Security up in J&K

SRINAGAR: Tight security was in place ahead of special local elections in four Indian Kashmir districts after militant separatists threatened to attack candidates and voters, police said on Sunday. “We have made adequate security arrangements for peaceful by-elections,” senior police officer K Rajinder Kumar told reporters. The special voting, or by-election, to fill four vacant state assembly seats in Kashmir is due to be held on Monday. — AFP

Former minister dead

KUALA LUMPUR: Ghafar Baba, Malaysia’s former No 2 leader who rose from humble roots as a rural schoolteacher, died on Sunday after nearly a decade of poor health, officials said. He was 81. Ghafar, who was former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s deputy between 1986 and 1993, succumbed to heart, lung and kidney ailments in a Kuala Lumpur private hospital, an official in the Prime Minister’s Department, Raja Hydar Raja Iskandar, told the national news agency Bernama. — AP

Record hashish haul

COLOMBO: Fishermen in the Indian Ocean tourist paradise of the Maldives gave police their biggest catch of illegal drugs after an accidental discovery of hashish in a lagoon, the Haveeru News Service reported on Sunday. Lobster fishermen found the hasish packed in 1,697 plastic bags on the ocean bed, the news agency said, adding that there were about 1,700 kg in total. — AFP

Oil spills in river

KUALA LUMPUR: A truck full of palm oil has overturned and emptied its load into a river near the Malaysian capital, threatening to disrupt the water supply to thousands of residents, a report said on Sunday. Selangor state Infrastructure and Public Utilities Committee chairman Abdul Fatah Iskandar said the tanker fell on its side on Friday after it was hit by another lorry, according to the Star Daily. — AFP

Falungong protest

TAIPEI: Thousands of Taiwan’s slogan-chanting Falungong practitioners and supporters took to the Taipei streets on Sunday to protest against the continued suppression on the sect in China. The protesters called for support of the movement to topple the Chinese communist party saying “only after implementing democracy, can China have bright future.” “People around the world are aware about the Chinese communist regime’s atrocities in the past decades, but they may not know that today when China boasts that it has implemented reform and open policies, it still suppresses its people with violence and lies,” the demonstrators said in a statement. — AFP

Aceh polls in August

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s vice president set an August target date for elections in Indonesia’s tsunami-ravaged Aceh province, a key part of a peace agreement reached last year to end a 29-year civil war. Jusuf Kalla said he would ask the European Union to extend its Aceh peace monitoring mission two months beyond their June deadline so they could oversee the polls, which will be contested by former rebels. — AP

One killed in blast

LAHORE: One man was killed and two others injured on Sunday after a dud rocket exploded at a scrap-metal shop in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, police said. The rocket exploded when a guard at a scrap-metal shop in congested Misri Shah neighbourhood of Lahore tried to separate a metal piece from it, police said. — AFP