End Of Terorist Story : Noordin M top
SOLO, KOMPAS.com — An explosion and gunfire rocked a besieged village house in central Indonesia where counterterrorism forces hunted Thursday for suspects in July’s twin suicide bombings in the capital, witnesses and officials said. At least two body bags were removed from the scene.
Police cordoned off a neighborhood late Wednesday in a suburb of the Central Java city of Solo, a stronghold for hardline Islamist groups, and shots rang out through the night, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.
An explosion went off around daybreak Thursday and four ambulances later drove away carrying at least two bodies in orange bags, the reporter said.
Police had confirmed a special forces operation was unfolding, but declined to give details. They could not be reached to comment on local television reports that police officers were injured in a shootout.
“I ran out of my house in fear when I heard the gunfire,” said Widjan, a neighbor, who like many Indonesian goes by one name. The besieged property was rented several months ago by a young couple, and the two work as teachers at an Islamic boarding school and a kindergarten, local village chief Suratim said.
Police were searching for key suspects believed to be hiding at the house, an official with the counterterrorism force said. Backup units with anti-explosives equipment were deployed, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to the media.
The raid comes as police continue a massive manhunt for perpetrators of attacks on the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta on July 17. The blasts killed seven people and wounded more than 50, ending nearly four years without terrorist strikes in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
Several suspects have been detained or gunned down in raids in recent weeks, but the alleged terrorist mastermind, Malaysian fugitive Noordin Muhammad Top, remains at large. Police are also still searching for several militant operatives believed to have planned the operation and recruited the bombers.
Noordin allegedly leads a breakaway group of the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah, which carried out a string of bombings in Indonesia in recent years with the support of al-Qaida.
Terrorist attacks have killed 250 people in Indonesia since 2002, most of them in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing that left more than 200 people dead, most of them foreign tourists.
Sumber : AP
Stocks Extend Gains to 5 Days after Jobs Report
In this Sept. 30, 2008 file photo, Wall St. is shown in New York. Investors are adding more money to stocks following a drop in weekly unemployment claims Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009, and an upbeat forecast from Procter & Gamble.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 80 points Thursday to its highest close since November. The index is up 347 points in five days, its longest winning streak since last fall.
The gains have come even as analysts say the market is overdue for a retreat. The advance followed the Labor Department's report that jobless claims fell more than expected to 550,000 last week. A jump in oil lifted energy companies and an upbeat forecast from consumer products maker Procter & Gamble Co. added to enthusiasm about an economic recovery.
Momentum grew in midafternoon as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a Congressional panel that confidence and stability were returning to the economy after the panic that began a year ago.
Some pieces of bad news held back certain shares but didn't get in the way of a broad market advance. Agricultural company Monsanto Co. warned that its 2009 earnings would come in at the low end of its forecast and said it would cut more jobs than previously announced.
Investors voiced concerns about the pace of the gains but few wanted to stand in the way of a market that was carving its way higher. The Standard & Poor's 500 index has risen 54.3 percent since hitting a 12-year low in March. It is sitting at an 11-month high, though it's still down 33.3 percent from its peak in October 2007.
Ralph Fogel, co-chief investment officer at Fogel Neale Partners in New York, argues that too many analysts are now expecting a pullback for it to actually happen. He pointed to a well-tested piece of Wall Street wisdom that if a certain prediction becomes too widely expected in the marketplace, that conclusion is often wrong.
"I'm not sure why sure this market is going to slow up so much," Fogel said. "We look for a nice continued move upward."
According to preliminary calculations, the Dow rose 80.26, or 0.8 percent, to 9,627.48 to its highest close since Nov. 3, when it ended at 9,319.83.
The broader S&P 500 index rose 10.77, or 1 percent, to 1,044.14. The index hasn't risen five straight days since a streak that ended Nov. 28. The Nasdaq composite index rose 23.63, or 1.2 percent, to 2,084.02.
Bond prices jumped after a $12 billion auction of 30-year Treasury notes drew strong demand. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.36 percent from 3.48 percent late Wednesday. The yield on the 30-year bond fell to 4.20 percent from 4.33 percent.
Investors made selective bets on companies following a mixed batch of corporate forecasts. P&G rose $2.28, or 4.2 percent, to $56.04, while Monsanto fell $4.18, or 5 percent, to $79.30.
Some analysts remain cautious. Subodh Kumar, global investment strategist at Subodh Kumar & Associates in Toronto, contends that the market has gone too far without a break.
"The fact that it got here without any meaningful corrections means it hasn't stopped since March to test the validity of its assumptions," he said.
Three stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 813.5 million shares compared with 875.3 million at the same point Wednesday. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 8.50, or 1.5 percent, to 594.90.
The dollar fell against other major currencies. Gold slipped.
Light, sweet crude rose 63 cents to $71.94 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Overseas, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.3 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 0.4 percent, and France's CAC-40 fell 0.1 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 2 percent.
Sumber : AP
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