■Fiji
Chief faces coup charges
Fiji's vice president and high traditional chief Jopi Seniloli yesterday appeared in court on charges linked to the 2000 coup in the South Pacific nation, a day after he was arrested amid fears of fresh unrest. Seniloli, who appeared with four others including Cabinet Minister Isireli Lewniqila, faced charges linked to the coup masterminded by convicted traitor George Speight. On May 19 last year, Speight led special forces soldiers into parliament, seizing then premier Mahendra Chaudhry and his government and holding them hostage for 56 days. Seniloli was a key figure in the trial of supporters of Speight. Speight himself pleaded guilty to treason in 2001.
■ The Philippines
Former captive suspicious
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo ordered yesterday an investigation into allegations by a former American hostage that military officials had colluded with the Abu Sayyaf kidnap group. The charges were made in a book by Gracia Burnham, an American missionary who was kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf in 2001 and rescued by Philippine soldiers after more than a year last June. In a speech to a religious group, Arroyo stressed her "unremitting confidence" in the armed forces in its continuing fight to crush the Abu Sayyaf, but stressed a probe into Burnham's claim was necessary.
■ Australia
Queen's man denies rape
The British queen's embattled representative in Australia denied yesterday he had raped a woman in the 1960s, further fuelling the biggest controversy to hit the vice-regal office in three decades. Governor-General Peter Hollingworth -- who is facing calls to resign for mishandling child sex abuse complaints when he was an Anglican archbishop in the 1990s -- said a woman had made the rape claims in a civil case before a Victoria state court. Hollingworth, 68, made no comment on his future as governor-general, the titular head of state in the former British colony who represents the queen and, while the position is largely ceremonial, retains the power to sack an Australian government.
■ Indonesia
Bali trial to begin Monday
The head of Indonesia's militant Islamic Defenders Front, who tried to sign up volunteers to fight the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, went on trial in Jakarta yesterday for inciting violence and raiding nightclubs. Muhammad Rizieq's trial is one of several high profile cases against militants in the world's most populous Muslim country. Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged leader of the violent Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiah network, is currently on trial for treason. Next Monday, the first trial over last year's deadly Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people will start.
■ The Philippines
Elephant runs amok
An elephant escaped from a pen and ran wild yesterday in the Philippine capital, causing panic among pedestrians and motorists, police said. Investigators said the elephant, which came from Thailand, was part of the Elephant World show in the suburban city of Quezon. A handler was giving the 21-year-old male elephant, named Tool, a bath when it was able to break off its restraints and ran out of the pen, police said. The elephant's Thai trainers were able to chain the agitated animal to a tree in a busy restaurant row, a few kilometers away from the coliseum after a 30-minute chase along the main EDSA highway.
■United States
Bush rewards Spain
President George W. Bush rewarded one of his most loyal supporters in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, on Wednesday with a meeting in the Oval Office, a dinner at the White House and the inclusion of Batasuna, a radical Basque nationalist party, on the State Department list of international terrorist groups. Batasuna is allied with the violent separatist group ETA, and administration officials said on Wednesday that it had been responsible for more than 850 deaths in Spain. Aznar had requested the designation, and during a joint news conference in the White House on Wednesday, he profusely thanked the president for keeping his word. Neither leader mentioned an explicit quid pro quo, but neither had to. President Bush made it clear that good things were in store for Spain in exchange for its support of the US during the six-week American-led war.
■ United Kingdom
Townshend put on list
Pete Townshend, the rock guitarist and co-founder of the Who, was given a formal police caution and placed on an official register of sex offenders on Wednesday for having gained access to a pedophile Web site. Townshend, 57, was cleared of the more serious charge of being in possession of indecent pictures downloaded from the Internet, and the police said his name would be removed from the register after five years, barring any new incident.
■ Zimbabwe
Court makes a stand
Zimbabwe's highest court on Wednesday struck down sections of tough media legislation which had made it an offence to publish "falsehoods," after the government conceded the provisions were unconstitutional. The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change called the verdict a victory against a law it said was as "unconstitutional as it was primitively vindictive", while media groups said the entire package must be thrown out. "This was a symbolic victory for the media fraternity, but the fight is not over because the punitive nature of the whole legislation is frightening," said Andy Moyse, coordinator of the watchdog Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe.
■ Honduras
Honorary consul killed
Two gunmen wielding automatic weapons gunned down an honorary Belgian consul to Honduras late Wednesday as he steered his BMW through a downtown neighborhood in the country's second-largest city. Arnulfo Gutierrez's wife, Maria del Carmen Rapalo, was abducted 51 days ago and her kidnappers may have instructed the 62-year-old to meet them to discuss ransom demands in the area where he was shot, said Danilo Valladres, the case's lead investigator. The suspects ambushed Gutierrez's car, spraying it with bullets before fleeing the scene on foot and disappearing in a getaway car. They remained at large, Valladres said in a phone interview.
■ Iraq
Blogger alive and well
The enigmatic Iraqi blogger survived the US invasion and concluded: "War sucks big time." Salam Pax, pseudonym for an anonymous Iraqi who logged the prelude and start of the invasion but went offline on March 24 when the electricity went down, filed his first post-war report on Wednesday by e-mail to a skeptical fellow blogger.
Agencies
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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