Wikinews Shorts: August 14, 2009
A compilation of brief news reports for Friday, August 14, 2009.
Bali bomber still at large
A body recovered by Indonesian police on August 8th is not that of Noordin Mohammed Top. The Indonesian authorities had been optimistic that Top, the mastermind behind the 2002 Bali bombings, had been killed on Saturday in a gun battle that concluded a 17 hour siege in the Temanggung district of Central Java.
DNA tests suggests that the body is that of a man identified only as Ibrahim, a florist who was the inside man in the attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta this July.
Sources
- Dicky Christanto and Mustaqim Adamrah. "Ibrohim played key role in Jakarta hotel bombings: Police" — The Jarkarta Post, August 13, 2009
- "Bali bombing mastermind escaped deadly police siege" — Xinhua News Agency, August 12, 2009
- Anne Tang. "DNA test shows JI leader Top still alive" — Xinhua News Agency, August 12, 2009
Obama health reforms faces grassroots opposition
Attempts by President Barack Obama to reform the health care in the United States has been met with grassroots opposition. Critics fear that Obama's reforms are an attempt to socialise health care. However, the President has dismissed such apprehension as an attempt to "scare and mislead" by vested interests hoping to derail the reforms.
Opposition adverts which feature the alleged failures and rationing of healthcare in the British National Health Service (NHS), have been rebutted by citizens, politicians and the media. Spurred on by American commentators that described that the NHS as "evil' and Orwellian, with over a million responses to an on-line Twitter campaign, called welovetheNHS started in support of the NHS.
Sources
- Patrick Foster. "Anti-healthcare lobbyists duped us, say Katie Brickell and Kate Spall" — The Times, August 14, 2009
- Clare Ellicott. "'I owe my life to the NHS': Stephen Hawking tells US to stop attacking health service" — The Daily Mail, August 13, 2009
- "Tough questions, frustrations continue in town halls" — CNN, August 13, 2009
- Kerry Sheridan. "Obama aims to sooth concerns amid healthcare fury" — Agence France-Presse, August 13, 2009
British deaths in Afghanistan reaches 199
Three British soldiers of have been killed by an explosion whilst on foot patrol near the town of Sangin in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
The death of the soldiers — two from the 2nd Battalion The Rifles and one from 40 Regiment Royal Artillery — brings the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 199.
"[These deaths] brings us very close to the sad milestone of 200 fatalities in this conflict. We cannot help but reflect on the toll the mission has taken..." said Bob Ainsworth, the British Secretary of State for Defence.
Sources
- "Three UK soldiers die in Helmand" — BBC News Online, August 13, 2009
- "Soldiers killed in Afghanistan to be named: report" — Agence France-Presse, August 13, 2009
