GLOBAL SNAPSHOT
Urban wins
LOS ANGELES: Keith Urban has claimed three trophies at the American Music Awards.
The Australian artist, sitting alongside wife Nicole Kidman, was first announced as the winner of the favourite male artist gong yesterday at the Microsoft Theatre.
When he was on stage it was also revealed he was the winner of the favourite album award for Ripcord and favourite song for Blue Ain’t Your Color.
Poll showdown
SANTIAGO: Conservative billionaire businessman Sebastian Pinera has won Chile’s presidential election, but will now have to face Leftist candidate Alejandro Guillier in a run-off in December. The 67year-old took 36.6 per cent of the vote with 99 per cent of votes tallied. Independent senator Guillier, 64, who represented outgoing President Michelle Bachelet’s centre-Left coalition, received 22.6 per cent of the vote.
Stampede tragedy
RABAT: Fifteen people are dead and five have been injured in a stampede for food aid in Morocco. The crush happened in the Southern Moroccan village of Sidi Boulalam, near Essaouira, as a local association was distributing food in a local weekly “souk”, or market, the Moroccan Government says. The nation’s king Mohammed VI will pay for the hospitalisation of the wounded and the burials of the dead.
Deadly blaze
BEIJING: A fire in a Beijing apartment block that killed 19 people and injured eight has prompted authorities to order citywide safety checks, state news agency Xinhua reports. The fire broke out on Saturday evening at a three-storey apartment block.
Troop grog ban
TOKYO: US military personnel in Okinawa have been restricted to base and banned from drinking alcohol after a Marine was arrested over a crash that killed a Japanese man. Media reports say police on the southern Japanese island arrested the 21-year-old Marine on suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injury or death and driving under the influence of alcohol.
Pollie arrested
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s anti-graft commission has arrested the speaker of the country’s Parliament who for weeks evaded questioning over his alleged role in the theft of $170 million of public money. Attempts to question Setya Novanto took an unexpected twist on Thursday night when he was involved in a car crash and admitted to hospital. The previous day he had evaded arrest in a police raid.