■ South Korea
Roh names ministers
President Roh Moo-hyun named three new Cabinet ministers yesterday, tapping a former head of his ruling Uri Party to handle relations with North Korea. Chung Dong-young, a former Uri chairman and close ally of Roh, was named as South Korea's new unification minister, said Jeong Chan-yong, the presidential adviser for personnel affairs. Chung replaces Jeong Se-hyun, who was appointed unification minister in 2002. Chung is a journalist-turned-legislator who undercut his party's popularity ahead of April parliamentary polls with a gaffe in which he told older South Koreans to "stay home and rest" and let the young generation vote.
■ Pakistan
Caretaker PM sworn in
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain was sworn in on Wednesday as Pakistan's prime minister, a job he is expected to keep for less than two months before passing it on to a technocrat handpicked by military President Pervez Musharraf. By the end of next month, Shaukat Aziz, a former executive with Citibank of New York who Musharraf made finance minister after a military coup in 1999, will take over the reins provided he wins a seat in the lower house, or National Assembly. Hussain, a political wheeler-dealer who threw his lot in with General Musharraf after he seized power almost five years ago, was named as a stop-gap prime minister by Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who resigned the premiership on Saturday after a 19-month stint.
■ Hong Kong
Test-taker commits suicide
A Hong Kong schoolgirl ran out of an exam she was taking and jumped three storeys to her death, police said yesterday. The girl, 17, was midway through the examination when she ran out and clambered over the railings of a school corridor to commit suicide Tuesday afternoon. An ambulance crew raced to the scene at St. Stephen's College in Hong Kong's Stanley district and declared her dead shortly after 3:30pm, a police spokesman said. Seventeen Hong Kong students have committed suicide in the current academic year compared to just 12 in the previous school year.
■ Hong Kong
Safety device goes berserk
A fire extinguisher sprang a leak and shot 12 storeys into the air, taking off a construction worker's arm in a freak accident that prompted his coworkers to pray to appease angry spirits, reports said yesterday. The accident occurred Monday in a building many believe is haunted after a fire eight years ago killed 40 people and injured 81. Workers were demolishing the building when the sudden leak in the fire extinguisher propelled it into the air. The 36-year-old man who lost his arm remained hospitalized in serious condition yesterday, government officials said.
■ Hong Kong
Charges in boulder theft
A rural committee official appeared in court yesterday charged with fraud over a scandal in which a river was ruined to beautify a site next to a new Hong Kong Disney park. Hundreds of tonnes of boulders were illegally excavated from the Tung Chung river to use on the under-construction Disney theme park on Hong Kong's Lantau Island earlier this year. The stolen boulders were used to landscape a government site adjoining the theme park. Contractors backed by rural officials allegedly claimed the boulders were being removed to solve a flooding problem with the river.
■ United States
Second cow tests positive
A second animal in less than a week preliminarily tested positive for mad cow disease and will be retested, the US Agriculture Department said late on Tuesday. It refused
to disclose any information about the suspect animal's slaughter location, age
or sex, but said the cattle carcass did not enter the human food supply. Officials say the government's new, rapid tests carry a greater risk of false positives. The first US case of mad cow disease was diagnosed last December in a Washington state dairy cow. The government began using rapid test kits on June 1,
as part of a program to
test more US cattle for the
brain-wasting disease, which
is believed to be spread
when cattle eat the infected remains of other cattle.
■ United STAtes
Spy back out in the cold
An Australian spy is being sent home from Washington after leaving a briefcase with classified US documents
in a congressional office,
a newspaper reported yesterday. The liaison officer with the Office of National Assessments (ONA) left the briefcase behind following a briefing by US officials, the Australian daily said. A US staffer eventually noticed the briefcase and returned
it to the Australian embassy. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said an officer was being recalled but provided no details.
US State Department
and intelligence officials
were "livid" at the spy's carelessness, identified as Robert Owen-Jones, and called for him to be sent home, the newspaper said.
■ United Kingdom
Tube strike hits London
Commuters walked, biked, packed into overcrowded buses and crawled along in heavy traffic jams as a 24-hour subway drivers' strike made a mess of London's rush hour yesterday morning. A small number
of trains on a few lines remained in service, but the vast majority of the massive network was at a standstill, leaving the roughly 3 million people who use the system every day to scramble for alternative ways of getting around. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper in the capital and overland train stations were jammed with people. Buses were so crowded they passed by stop after stop without letting anyone on.
■ Africa
Call for new ivory ban
A dozen African nations have called for a new international ban on the ivory trade, insisting the recent easing
of tough limits is threatening elephant populations. Leaders of national wildlife and hunting agencies, wrapping up a two-day meeting in Paris on
Tuesday, said they wanted
to discourage poachers who have at times engaged in deadly clashes with game reserve guards as they sought to kill elephants for their tusks. Delegates, mainly from western and central Africa, met to craft a common position for the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference in Bangkok, Thailand in October.
■ Spain
Heatwave drains power
Spain has suffered its first power cuts of the summer, with a heatwave stretching what critics say is an already overstrained electricity network to breaking point. Power cuts affected the city of Seville, with failed traffic lights bringing chaos to
the roads on Monday and Tuesday as temperatures climbed above 40oC across the south and west. Sudden surges of demand have provoked fears of a return
of the power cuts that have blighted recent summers.
■ United States
Lobbyist data withheld
The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobby-ists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system. Advo-cates for open government said the government's asser-tion that it could not copy data from its computers was unprecedented but repre-sentative of generally nega-tive responses to Freedom of Information Act requests. ``This was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them,'' Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said Tuesday. The watchdog group in Washington made the request nearly six months ago in January. Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered federal agencies in October 2001 to review more closely which documents they release.
■ Sierra Leone
Crash kills 24 UN troops
A helicopter crashed in flames on a remote hillside in Sierra Leone, killing all 24 peacekeepers, aid workers and others aboard, UN officials said. The passengers aboard the Russian-made Mi-8 that crashed on Tuesday included 14 Pakistani peacekeepers and a Pakistani police officer. The Russian crew was among the victims, UN mission spokes-woman Sharon McPherson said. Authorities offered no explanation for the accident. The UN has about 11,800 troops in Sierra Leone.
■ Belgium
EU chief vows low profile
Jose Durao Barroso, the Portuguese prime minister and next European Commission president, says he will be a strong leader at the EU head office who will ensure big nations do not run roughshod over their smaller partners. The EU leaders' unanimous decision to put Durao Barroso at the top of the EU executive ended weeks of acrimony over who would be the best candidate to succeed Italy's Romano Prodi, who steps down at the end of October. Durao Barroso was picked after other candidates were rejected in haggling that mirrored divisions over the US-led Iraq war.
■ United States
Guards expelled for spying
Two security guards at Iran's UN mission were expelled from the United States for photographing ``sensitive'' sites in New York after two previous warnings about such picture-taking, US officials said. Iran's UN mission denied the charges, saying that the guards photographed only typical tourist attractions. The US took action after the FBI observed the pair video-taping, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Tuesday. The incident occurred in May, a note to the Iranians said. The two guards, who were not identified, left Saturday evening. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in November that two Iranian citizens were questioned while taking video images of subway tracks in Queens.
■ Qatar
Russians guilty in killing
A Qatari court yesterday found two Russian intelligence officers guilty of the assassination of a Chechen rebel leader and sentenced them to life in prison. The Russian officers were arrested in in February on suspicion of planting a bomb that killed Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former Chechen president and rebel leader, and injured his young son. Russia has denied involvement in the killing, saying that the unidentified defendants were gathering antiterrorism information.
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
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was