- Monday, October 4, 2010

JAPAN

Party powerbroker to be charged

TOKYO | Japanese ruling party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa will be charged in a funding scandal, a judicial panel said Monday, clouding his chances of making another grab at power after having just lost a party leadership vote.

Some experts have said that the 68-year-old Mr. Ozawa, who favors spending to stimulate the economy, could be biding his time to stage a political comeback if Prime Minister Naoto Kan flounders with policy deadlock in a divided parliament.

Mr. Ozawa lost to Mr. Kan in a Democratic Party of Japan leadership race in September, but many credit him with engineering the party’s election victory in 2009 that ended more than 50 years of almost nonstop rule by the Liberal Democrats.

BURMA

Suu Kyi to sue junta over party’s demise

RANGOON | Detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will try to sue the country’s military rulers for dissolving her political party after it decided to boycott next month’s election, her lawyer said Monday.

Mrs. Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest for breach of an internal security law, told lawyers of her now defunct National League for Democracy party to file a lawsuit with her country’s Supreme Court.

Legal experts deemed it highly unlikely the case would be accepted by the court, which usually rules in favor of the military regime that has kept Mrs. Suu Kyi in detention for 15 of the past 21 years.

BOSNIA

Moderates gain ground in Bosnian elections

SARAJEVO | Bosnia’s election results Monday showed moderates gaining ground in the Muslim Croat Federation and central government, but hard-liners stayed firmly entrenched in the Serb entity.

In the sixth general elections since the 1992-1995 war, voters chose the tripartite presidency, the central parliament and the assemblies of the two autonomous entities — the Serbs’ Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

IRAN

Official: Leak caused stall at nuclear plant

TEHRAN | A months-long delay in starting up Iran’s first nuclear power plant is the result of a small leak, not a computer worm that was found on the laptops of several plant employees, the country’s nuclear chief said Monday.

The leak occurred in a storage pool where the plant’s fuel is being held before being fed into the reactor core, and it has been fixed, said Ali Akbar Salehi, who is also Iran’s vice president.

He did not specify whether it was nuclear fuel or another material that leaked. He first announced the delay on Thursday but without giving a reason.

Iranian officials say they are vigorously battling the Stuxnet computer worm, which they suspect is part of a covert plot by the West to damage Iran’s nuclear work.

From wire dispatches and staff reports

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