Third Aussie charged with sex slavery
Third Aussie charged with sex slavery
AUSTRALIA: An unemployed man on Thursday became the third person charged under Australian laws prohibiting sexual slavery for allegedly luring three Indonesian women to Sydney and forcing them into prostitution, police said.
Australian Federal Police said they believe the women were brought to Sydney with the promise of jobs in public relations and hospitality but once they arrived were forced to work as prostitutes.
The 36-year-old man, from the inner-Sydney suburb of Ultimo, was charged with three counts of deceiving a person into sexual servitude and one count of possessing a prohibited drug.
Two of his alleged accomplices were charged on Wednesday over the scheme. They were the first persons charged under 1999 federal legislation relating to sexual servitude, authorities said. --AFP
;REUTERS;KOD; ANPAi..r.. ATW-US-Arms-missile Sea-based missile defense fails test JP/11/ATW
Sea-based missile defense fails test
UNITED STATES: An interceptor missile fired from a U.S. Navy cruiser on Wednesday missed its target, a mock warhead, over the Pacific Ocean, the military said.
The failed test, the first miss in four attempts to shoot down an incoming short-range missile using the sea-based Aegis weapons system, was a setback for the Pentagon's largest weapons development program.
Five out of eight tests of a companion ground-based missile interceptor have successfully hit their targets in what critics have called unrealistically controlled conditions.
In December, President Bush ordered activation by Sept. 30, 2004, of anti-missile capabilities that could guard against a strike from North Korea, which the CIA says probably already has one or two nuclear weapons. --Reuters
;REUTERS;KOD; ANPAi..r.. ATW-security-Canada Sikh, Sunni groups added to 'terrorist' list JP/11/ATW
Sikh, Sunni groups added to 'terrorist' list
CANADA: Canada banned three Sikh militant groups as "terrorist" organizations on Wednesday, including one allegedly linked to the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182.
Federal Solicitor General Wayne Easter said Ottawa had determined that Babbar Khalsa, Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation "knowingly engaged in terrorist activity."
It also banned two Pakistan-based Sunni militant groups, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, bringing the number of groups on Canada's prohibited list to 31.
The three Sikh groups support the creation of an independent Sikh homeland in India's Punjab. --Reuters