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Surfer-killing sharks lurch around Australian coast Forty states to forfeit health care funds for poor children
For the first time in 20 years, two surfers have been killed by sharks on two consecutive days.

A New Zealander was mutilated by a great white shark while on his honeymoon, followed by another attack on an Australian teenager on the subsequent day.

The New Zealander, Cameron Bayes, was yanked off of his board 50m from shore while surfing at Cactus Beach, about 200km west of Elliston (South Australia).

Witnesses described the shark as being as four to five meters in length. A Witness explained how Mr. Bayes had managed to clamber back onto his surfboard, only to be knocked off and dragged under water by the shark once again.

"I didn't see the shark again until it was about 400 meters offshore. He came to the surface and spat the board out, thrashed around, and then just went under and was gone," the witness added.

Mr. Bayes was on a honeymoon with his wife, who is presently said to be in hospital suffering from severe shock.

In the seconds attack, police explained that a teenager was mauled by a shark while surfing about 50m off Black Point, 5km north of Elliston on Monday. The teenager still has not been identified.

Police are still searching for the bodies of both victims

Shark experts said this was a very unusual event: the first time in some 23 years that there had been two lethal attacks in the same region. But they did not think the same killer shark was behind both attacks.

Nevertheless, locals are reluctant to swim in the coastal waters whilst the memories of the deaths of the victims is still vivid in their minds.

Forty states will soon give up hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money earmarked for health insurance for children in low-income families because they haven't used all their allotted funds, The New York Times reported Sunday.

About 45 percent of the $4.2 billion provided in 1997 by Congress hasn't been spent by the states, state and federal officials said.

Any money left after a September 30 deadline will be redistributed to the 10 states that used their full allotments of federal money under the Children's Health Insurance Program, a program created by Congress in 1997.

For Louisiana, that would mean giving up $63.7 million, or 63 percent of its allotment of $101.7 million.

California and Texas -- which together have 29 percent of the nation's 11 million uninsured children -- stand to lose $590 million and $446.3 million, respectively.

The states that have used all of their allotments -- Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina -- will have one year to spend the extra money, after which it will revert to the Treasury.

The Children's Health Insurance Program was designed to help children in families with too much income to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance.

Congress in 1997 committed to providing a total of $40 billion for the program nationwide over 10 years. States had three years beginning Oct. 1, 1997, to use the first year's installment of $4.2 billion.

State officials say the program provides care to more than two million children while stimulating improvements in Medicaid. But spending has lagged behind expectations.

Officials in 20 states say they encountered major problems implementing the program because in some cases it took more than a year to start enrollment; some states couldn't find enough eligible children, and others said the complex application procedure deterred enrollment.

"If we enrolled every single eligible child in Colorado, we still couldn't spend our full allocation of federal money. Our economy is doing so well, there are fewer eligible kids than what was estimated when the federal government did its initial allocation of money," said William N. Lindsay, head of the board that supervises the program in Colorado.

Some states complained that the federal government administered the program in such a rigid, inflexible way that it prevented them from spending the money for children who might have benefited.

"The federal law and regulations provided New Mexico with a lot more money than we could possibly use," complained J. Barry Blitzer, deputy secretary of the Human Services Department in New Mexico. "We have 30,000 uninsured kids, of whom no more than 1,000 are eligible for the new program."

Muslim rebels kill 12 people in Algeria Police arrest 25 in Jakarta bombings
Algerian Muslim rebels killed 12 civilians, including a baby and two women, in three separate attacks south of Algiers, a local newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Liberte daily said rebels broke into a farmer's home on Friday and shot dead seven family members at Chateau d'Eau hamlet in Blida area, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Algiers.

"The victims in the random killing were a nine-month-old baby, two children aged one and two years, two women, an adult man and an elderly man," the newspaper said, quoting residents and local security officials.

Liberte said the assailants fled under cover of darkness, taking with them food and the family jewelry.

In another attack, rebels cut the throats of three people at a fake roadblock near Berbessa village in Blida region on Friday.

Two more people were killed in a similar roadblock attack a few hours earlier on Friday, also near Berbessa.

"The two men were brothers who had met the same fate while they were returning home in Berbessa. The car they were travelling in was set ablaze," Liberte added without giving further details.

Algeria has been racked by violence since early 1992 when the authorities canceled a general election in which Muslim militants had taken a commanding lead. More than 100,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since.

 

Indonesian police said Sunday they had arrested 25 people suspected of carrying out a spate of bombings in the capital, including a blast at the Jakarta Stock Exchange that killed 15 people.

One suspect, armed with a grenade, was picked up as he was on his way to attack Jakarta's U.S. Embassy and a nearby crowded department store, said Brig. Gen. Dadang Garnida, who heads the police information department.

Other senior police officers said most of the detainees were from the northwestern province of Aceh, which has been wracked by years of bloody fighting between separatist guerrillas and Indonesian troops.

There were no military or police personnel in the group, despite speculation that disaffected elements within the armed forces, loyal to disgraced ex-dictator Suharto, might have been responsible for the bombings.

All were arrested in the capital and the hunt for more suspects was continuing across the city of 11 million people, police said.

News of the arrests came one day after President Abdurrahman Wahid installed a new national police chief and ordered quick action to stop the attacks, which he claimed were designed to undermine his reformist 11-month-old government.

Police said the first suspect was arrested on Saturday. After his interrogation, 24 others were detained on Sunday.

"They are suspected of being responsible for all the bombings in Jakarta," Garnida said. "One suspect said he was going to bomb the U.S. Embassy and Sarinah (department store) next."

Senior Superintendent Saleh Saaf, deputy national police spokesman, said the group of suspects included four men believed to be the ringleaders of the bombing operation.

"The people arrested have no links to military or police," he said. "We suspect terrorists groups from Aceh are behind the bombings. Most of those caught are Acehnese."

However, the troubled province's main rebel group, the Free Aceh Movement, denied any involvement in the Jakarta bombings.

"It's impossible those arrested are our members because we have no forces in Jakarta," Ayah Muni, a separatist spokesman, said.

Since 1975, the Free Aceh Movement has been fighting for independence from Indonesia, leaving at least 5,500 people dead in the past decade. Although Indonesia is mostly Muslim, the rebels want to introduce Islamic law and re-establish the feudal Sultanate of Aceh.

On September 13, a car bomb blew up and set fire to the basement garage of the Jakarta stock exchange, killing 15 people and injuring scores more.

On August 1, another car bomb exploded outside the Philippine ambassador's residence, killing two people and injuring dozens, including the envoy.

There have also been bomb attacks at the Malaysian Embassy and the office of Indonesia's attorney general. A bus was blown up a few weeks ago as well.

The blasts have coincided with developments in a corruption case against ex-dictator Suharto and many have speculated that the attacks were the work of his supporters opposed to Wahid's democratic reforms.

The accusation has been denied by Suharto's family and lawyers, who maintain the ex-leader is too sick after three strokes to attend his trial, which began on Aug. 31. Suharto underwent court-ordered medical tests on Saturday.

Suharto was ousted from office in 1998 amid pro-democracy protests and riots.

The U.S. State Department warned U.S. citizens last week that American companies and interests might be targeted by the bombers. Anti-American sentiment in Indonesia recently has risen.

On September 18, visiting U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen warned that economic sanctions might be imposed on the world's fourth-most populous nation unless Jakarta reined in militia gangs that continue to cause havoc on Timor island.

The warning came after militia gangs killed three U.N. humanitarian workers, including a U.S. citizen, in Atambua in Indonesian West Timor on September 6.

The militias are the same gangs that devastated neighboring East Timor after its people voted to break free of Indonesian rule in a U.N.-supervised ballot a year ago.

There have been several anti-American demonstrations and U.S. flag burnings since Cohen's threat.

U.S. Embassy officials declined to comment Sunday.

 

 

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