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| Australian election seen as a dead heat, minor parties likely powerbrokers | |  By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia braced for an election that was too close to call on Friday, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull warning of economic chaos if his gamble on an early poll backfires and leaves him without the outright majority he needs to enact major reforms. The leader of Australia's conservative coalition prompted Saturday's election by dissolving both houses of parliament in May, blaming intransigent independents in the upper house Senate for blocking his agenda. Turnbull argued on Friday that minor parties, possibly in coalition with centre-left Labor, could not be trusted to manage an economy hampered by the first mining downturn in a century and balance public finances after years of deficits.
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| Leader of Myanmar's 'Saffron Revolution' freed, charges dropped | |  By Aung Hla Tun YANGON (Reuters) - A former monk and influential leader of Myanmar's 2007 anti-junta uprising has been freed from jail and charges against him dropped, his lawyer said on Friday, just a day after new charges were levelled against him. Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known by his ordination name, Gambira, was arrested in January for allegedly entering Myanmar illegally from neighbouring Thailand. Robert San Aung, his lawyer, said on Friday that these charges had been dropped and that Gambira was now free.
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| U.S. downgrades Myanmar, raises Thailand in human trafficking report | | | By Matt Spetalnick and Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States placed Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Sudan and Haiti on its list of worst human trafficking offenders on Thursday, drawing guarded praise from some human rights groups following criticism that last year's State Department report was politicized. While more than two dozen countries were downgraded in the closely watched Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Thailand was removed from the bottom rung despite what the State Department described as "widespread forced labor" in the country's vital seafood industry. |
| Hopes for democracy crushed in the Chinese rebel village of Wukan | |  By James Pomfret WUKAN, China (Reuters) - Hopes for democracy in the Chinese village of Wukan, where an uprising against corruption five years ago gained global notice and led to direct village-wide elections, have all but evaporated, with protest leaders either in detention, in exile, facing arrest or quitting their posts. Villagers have been marching in protest every day since the middle of June in a fresh flare-up of unrest, but the so-called "Wukan model", with authorities seemingly taking a more tolerant approach towards unrest by kicking out corrupt officials and allowing a free vote, appears to have been a one-off. Wukan is about a four-hour drive northeast of Hong Kong, where a 79-day "umbrella revolution" in late 2014 demanding Beijing allow full democracy, brought chaos to the streets.
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| Hindu priest hacked to death in Bangladesh | | | A Hindu priest was hacked to death on Friday at a temple in Bangladesh, police and senior administrative officials said. Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people, has seen a surge in violent attacks in few months on liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups by Islamist extremists. Police said they did not know the motive behind the killing of the Hindu priest and no one had been arrested. |
| New York Police Dept reinstates Muslim officer suspended over beard | | | A Muslim policeman who sued the New York City Police Department after he was suspended for refusing to shave his beard has been reinstated and the department has agreed to review its ban on beards, his lawyers said on Thursday. A judge last week ordered the NYPD to continue paying Officer Masood Syed his salary and benefits after he sued the department, claiming that the no-beard policy was unconstitutional. "I am hopeful that the department's new policy will in fact allow myself and other officers to wear our beards at a reasonable length without the fear of retaliation or hostility," he said. |
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