■ Indonesia
Graft accusations fly
Indonesian prosecutors have accused an entire district council and a former mayor of corruption for allegedly marking up their allowances, reports said yesterday. Suraini Dahlan, chief prosecutor at Cirebon in West Java, was quoted by Kompas newspaper as saying that 30 people had been declared suspects in the case, which dates back to 2001. They include then-Cirebon mayor Lasman Suriaatmadja and the current deputy mayor, who was a councilor in 2001.
■ Indonesia
Swedes interview rebels
A team of Swedish prosecutors arrived yesterday in Indonesia's Aceh to interview detained separatist rebels about possible links between exiled rebel leaders and violence in the province. The six-strong team from the Stockholm prosecutor's office was accompanied by Indonesian officials. The team will stay in Aceh until tomorrow and interview 13 Free Aceh Movement (GAM) members held by police in Banda Aceh and at Meulaboh in West Aceh, a police source told AFP. The Free Aceh Movement was founded in 1976 by Hasan Tiro, who lives in exile in Sweden with other top GAM officials. Most of them, including Tiro, have Swedish citizenship. Indonesia has pressed Sweden to curb their activities.
■ China
Chemicals foul Yangtze
Some 80 tonnes of the poisonous and flammable chemical cyclohexanone has leaked into the waters of the Yangtze river near Nanjing after a collision between two tankers, state media reported yesterday. The accident occurred on Sunday when the chemical tanker Changrun, loaded with cyclohexanone, collided with the Chicheng during docking maneuvers, Xinhua news agency said. Nobody was injured in the accident. An official from the Maritime Supervision Administration of Nanjing said the contamination of the city's water supply was limited and clean-up of the deadly liquid was near completion. "Since cyclohexanone does not really dissolve in water we can collect it in this way," the report quoted the unnamed official as saying.
■ Singapore
Couples in cable car contest
Thirty-six couples began a stomach-churning competition this week to live for seven days in cable cars dangling above Singapore, vying for a US$30,000 prize. By day two on Wednesday, 10 had dropped out, several after vomiting, which is banned in the "Survive the Sky" high-wire contest. As the cars move between Singapore and nearby Sentosa island, each couple must stay inside cabins equipped only with benches and a basic intercom system, except for one 10-minute break a day when they can step out at cable car stations. They are allowed no more than three meals and three liters of water daily. Each car holds two couples.
■ Australia
Koala bear goes to town
An indecisive koala caused traffic havoc yesterday as it weaved its way across the main intersection of a southeast country town in search of the perfect gum leaf. Motorists reported high levels of tension as the normally shy critter wandered from one side of the road to the other with scant regard for road safety or traffic signals. Police in Churchill in the state of Victoria said they spent the better part of the morning trying to catch the wayward koala as it tested the quality of the leaves on roadside eucalyptus trees.
■ United States
Popcorn leads to damages
A US jury has awarded US$20 million in damages to a man who suffered irreversible lung damage from workplace exposure to chemicals used in popcorn flavoring, lawyers said. The jury handed down the judgment on Monday following a two-week trial during which jurors heard how Eric Peoples developed a rare lung condition following a stint as an employee at a microwave popcorn factory in Missouri. The 32-year-old has been diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and incurable lung disease. He requires oxygen to breathe and will need a double lung transplant within 10 years, according to his doctors.
■ Germany
Breeder's brush with death
A German dog breeder's attempt to brush his prize Rottweiler's teeth ended in a trip to the emergency ward on Tuesday -- when the animal savaged the man's arm. As the 60-year-old Karlsruhe man approached the dog with a special canine tooth brush, it lunged at him with fangs flashing, severing arteries in his right arm, according to police. He survived only by "playing dead," at which point the Rottweiler lost interest and returned to its pen. Reeling from loss of blood, the injured man summoned help and was rushed to hospital. "If he hadn't pretended to be dead," a police officer said, "he might actually be dead now."
■ Italy
SS officer dies during trial
A former SS officer charged with the 1944 murder of 11 civilians in northern Italy died on Tuesday in Germany, a day after his main trial opened in Italy. Johannes Karl Schiffmann, 94, did not leave his old-age home in Lower Saxony to attend the trial and died at home, justice officials in the northern Italian town of La Spezia said. The charges were based on war crimes documents that resurfaced in 1994 and gave details of nearly 700 war crimes carried out by Germany's National Socialists and Italian Fascists between 1943 and 1945.
■ Italy
Mafia in dock after `suicide'
More than 20 years after the death of the banker Roberto Calvi was dismissed as suicide, four people, including a jailed Mafia boss, went on trial on Tuesday in Rome, charged with his murder. The case of the man known as "God's banker" remains one the most extraordinary of recent decades -- a whodunnit involving the Vatican, Cosa Nostra, rogue freemasons, financiers and politicians. Only one of the four defendants, Flavio Carboni, was in court to hear the charges. The Sardinian businessman told reporters: "I know as much about Calvi's murder as I do about the killing of Jesus Christ." Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars bridge in London in June, 1982.
■ United States
Saddam tells no secrets
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is not giving up much useful information under interrogation but he is talking to his captors, a senior US official said on Tuesday. Asked whether the US was getting any "worthwhile intelligence" from Saddam, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview on a Philadelphia radio station: "I occasionally see the debriefs and he's a pretty wily guy, and he's not giving much information I've seen, but he seems to be enjoying the debate." US authorities are interrogating Saddam at an undisclosed location in Iraq.
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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