INDONESIA: Losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto plans to file a legal challenge in the nation’s highest court, his campaign said yesterday.

Suharto-era General Subianto withdrew shortly before the result was announced, alleging massive fraud during the election, and that it was unfair and undemocratic.

He has repeatedly claimed that polling firms with links to his campaign showed he was ahead.

GERMANY: Bavarian authorities said yesterday that they have banned a neonazi group operating in the region.

The state interior ministry said it banned the Free Network South group and accused it of pursuing the “anti-constitutional endeavours” of an organisation that was banned a decade ago, the Franconian Action Front.

Along with other state governments, Bavaria is seeking a ban on Germany’s biggest far-right party, the National Democratic Party. Germany’s highest court is considering the case.

CHINA: Parts of the northern city of Yumen have been quarantined after state media said a man there died of bubonic plague.

Xinhua News Agency said that 151 people were under observation in the city in Gansu province after authorities determined they had come in contact with a man who died of the plague on July 16.

The report said all the people under quarantine were in good health, but that 10 checkpoints were still blocking off parts of the city of about 180,000.

AFGHANISTAN: Several hundred protesters rallied in the heart of Kabul yesterday to denounce the fighting in the Gaza Strip and the killings of Palestinian civilians.

Chanting anti-Israeli and anti-US slogans, the protesters marched through the centre of the Afghan capital, carrying banners and photographs of Palestinian children killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza.

LIBYA: The country’s General National Congress, which has been governing the violence-wracked country, will hand over power to the newly elected parliament on August 4, it said yesterday.

“Monday August 4 has been fixed as the date for the transfer of power … to the elected chamber,” it said in a statement signed by speaker Nuri Abu Sahmein.

LITHUANIA: The European Union said yesterday that it is giving Lithuania the green light to adopt the euro, starting next year.

Ministers from the 28-nation bloc cleared the final legal hurdle yesterday for Lithuania to become the 19th member of the currency zone.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius claimed that adopting the euro will strengthen the Baltic nation’s economy.

Lithuania’s Baltic neighbours Estonia and Latvia are already members of the eurozone.

ECUADOR: Authorities said yesterday that prominent physician Carlos Figueroa has been detained near Quito and sent to prison to serve a six-month sentence for defaming President Rafael Correa.

Mr Figueroa, opposition congressman Clever Jimenez and his adviser Fernando Villavicencio were convicted in April of defaming Mr Correa by accusing him of crimes against humanity in ordering the military to use force to free him from a besieged hospital during a 2010 police uprising.

PHILIPPINES: Officials said yesterday that suspected Abu Sayyaf militants have freed three abducted government aid workers in the south.

The three were kidnapped last Thursday in Talipao town in Sulu province, where they were working on an anti-poverty project.

Officials suspended payments to thousands of poor families because of the risk to aid workers, prompting Talipao officials to press the militants, who freed their hostages without any ransom payment.