JAKARTA - SUSPECTED Islamist suicide bombers detonated high-explosive devices in two luxury Jakarta hotels popular with foreigners on Friday, killing at least nine people, officials said.
Witnesses described grim scenes with bloodied survivors fleeing in panic from the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels, as terrorism returned to the world's most populous Muslim nation after four years without a major attack.
NEW YORK - TROUBLED US banking giant Citigroup said Friday it earned a profit of US$4.3 billion (S$6.22 billion) in the second quarter, resulting from a big one-time gain on a joint brokerage venture.
Citi's results rebounded from a US$2.49 billion loss in the same period a year ago, but the profit came from a one-time pretax gain of US$6.7 billion, or US$11.1 billion before taxes, from creating the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joint brokerage.
TEHERAN - DEFIANT supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi staged fresh demonstrations in Tehran Friday, witnesses said, after a powerful cleric called for the release of detainees held in a post-election crackdown.
Thousands of Mousavi supporters, shouting 'Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein!' and 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Greatest) demonstrated at various locations around Tehran university where Friday prayers were led by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
JAKARTA - TWIN hotel bombings on Friday appear to show the resilience of al-Qaeda-linked militants in Indonesia despite a crackdown that many assumed had left them seriously weakened.
The blasts in the heart of the capital were the first in Indonesia in four years. They came 10 days after the re-election of a US-friendly president in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation. The vote furthered the country's reputation as a beacon of secular democracy in the Islamic world.
