Obituaries
- Tom Clancy, whose high-tech, cold war thrillers such as The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games made him the most widely read and influential military novelist of his time, has died.
International
- A Bangladesh war crimes tribunal awarded death penalty to Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, a top ranking opposition leader, for murder and genocide during the country’s Liberation War in 1971.
- The Democratic-led Senate rejected the latest House Republican effort to negotiate on a spending bill stalled by conservative efforts to derail the health care overhaul.In a 54-46 party-line vote, the Senate turned aside a House request to name negotiators to a conference to resolve differences.
- President Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize by a Russian advocacy group for his key role in preventing a US missile strike on Syria and initiatives to dismantle Damascus’ chemical weapons.
- Malaysian lawmakers approved changes to a crime-prevention law which could be abused by authorities to hold people without trial for years and negate the prime minister Najib Razak’s pledge to protect human rights.PM is criticized for introducing the changes less than two years after abolishing laws that had occasionally been used in past decades to hold political dissenters without charge. Legislators in Parliament’s lower house passed the changes to the Prevention of Crime Act after a heated debate. The changes must be endorsed by Parliament’s upper house and the country’s constitutional monarch before they can take effect, but they are unlikely to encounter resistance at those stages.
