■ AustraliaDon't answer nature's call
Doctors criticized an Australian call center that obliged employees to make up for toilet breaks at the end of their shift. RSL COM had e-mailed its staff stating that "personal time" had to be made up after work, the Sun-Herald reported yesterday. "Making people log on and off when they go to the toilet so you can keep tabs on them is not a good public-health approach to the problem," Sydney urologist David Golovsky said. A spokesman for RSL COM said a "clarification of the policy will be made."
■ China
Moderate quake kills two
Two people were killed and at least 56 injured in a moderate earthquake that hit northern China, the government said yesterday. The magnitude 5.9 quake struck at 6:58pm Saturday in eastern Inner Mongolia between the towns of Bairin Zuoqi and Ar Horqin qi, northeast of Beijing, where several people also reported feeling minor tremors. More than 60 aftershocks have been felt since, the strongest with a magnitude of 4.4, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It was the most serious quake to hit Chifeng in 700 years, Xinhua said.
■ Pakistan
India seen as enemy
Most Pakistanis view India as an enemy and 47 percent feel that Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's recent peace initiative is a gimmick, according to an opinion poll. The poll published in the Indian newsweekly Outlook, which hit the stands yesterday, showed 79 percent of people in Pakistan felt the Kashmir issue needed to resolved for better ties between the two nuclear-capable neighbors. The survey was conducted by Gallup-Business Research Bureau, a Pakistan affiliate of Gallup International and polled 1,338 people on August 3 and 4 in all four provinces of Pakistan. The poll showed 54 percent saw India as an enemy.
■ China
Mafia man gets reprieve
A former legislator was given a reprieve on a death sentence for a mafia case that toppled the government of China's fifth-largest city, while his right-hand man was executed, state press said yesterday. The high court in Liaoning province on Saturday gave former legislator Liu Rong a two-year reprieve on the death sentence handed down to him in April last year for involvement in the affair in Shenyang city, Xinhua news agency said. In China a death sentence with a two-year reprieve is generally commuted to life imprisonment. Liu's top assistant in running mafiaoso rackets, Song Jianfei, was meanwhile executed Saturday immediately after the high court issued an execution order, the report said.
■ India
Moon mission planned
A day after India's prime minister announced plans to send a spacecraft to the moon before 2008, the nation's space agency said Saturday that the lunar trip was just the "forerunner of more ambitious planetary missions." "This mission [to the moon] will provide a unique opportunity for frontier scientific research," Indian Space Research Organization spokesman C.S. Ramachandran said in a statement. It is "expected to be the forerunner of more ambitious planetary missions in the years to come, including landing robots on the moon and visits by Indian spacecraft to other planets in the solar system." He did not elaborate.
■ JordanIraqi Chalaby faces charges
A parliamentary campaign for the extradition of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalaby, on charges of embezzlement dating back to 1990, gathered momentum in Jordan yesterday, a leading MP told local newspapers. Chalaby, chairman of the US appointed Iraq Governing Council, was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court in 1992 to 22 years in jail for his role in the collapse of the Petra Bank two years earlier. The extradition move is led by a prominent MP, Mahmoud Kharabshe, who told local media that he had so far collected the signatures of 21 deputies of the Lower House's 110 lawmakers urging the government "to seek Chalaby's extradition through Interpol and with the help of the US administration and Congress."
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