■ China
Part of satellite falls to earth
A section of a Chinese scientific satellite that was returning from orbit crashed into an apartment building, wrecking the top floor but causing no injuries, a newspaper said yesterday. The capsule crashed into the four-story building Friday in Penglai, a village in Sichuan Province, the Tianfu Morning News said. It said a woman who lived there had left five minutes earlier. A photo in the Tianfu Morning News showed the kettle-shaped capsule, which appeared to be about 2m long, lying amid broken bricks, beams and roof tiles. ``The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year,'' the tenant of the wrecked apartment, Huo Jiyu, was quoted as saying.
■ Malaysia
Kids used as guinea pigs
A doctor involved in traditional medicine practices has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping children and using them as guinea pigs in his experiments to find medical cures, news reports said yesterday. Police detained the doctor in southern Seremban town after a 14-year-old boy filed a police report claiming he had been held captive by the doctor for three months, the Star newspaper reported. The boy, who escaped earlier this week from the doctor's home, accused the 52-year-old doctor of performing numerous experiments on him.
■ Indonesia
Megawati spurns successor
President Megawati Sukarnoputri has decided not to attend this week's inauguration of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as president, a senior aide said yesterday. ``There are no regulations requiring her presence at the ceremony,'' said Pramono Anung, a senior official in her party. ``She also has no plans to meet him soon.'' Voters overwhelmingly dumped Megawati in favor of Yudhoyono in the country's first direct presidential vote. Media and critics have blasted Megawati for being a bad loser. She tearfully conceded defeat in a vaguely worded speech days after the final results were announced. Yudhoyono had attended the speech, but she never mentioned him by name and also refused to acknowledge his presence.
■ Thailand
`Fat, old' caddies fight back
Two hundred employees at the Pinehurst golf course have lodged a discrimination complaint with the Labor Ministry against the management's order for "short, fat, old" caddies to shape up or leave the greens, media reports said on Sunday. Pinehurst has given its female caddies three months to get their weight down to 70kg or lose their status as full-time employees, according to the Bangkok Post. At least 200 of the club's 400 to 700 caddies have lodged a discrimination complaint against the management on the grounds that beauty has nothing to do with toting golf bags and handling temperamental "masters," as they term the club's clientele.
■ China
Riot cops go to Haiti
Ninety-five Chinese riot police, including 13 women, left Beijing for Haiti yesterday, the first Chinese troops to be deployed to the Western Hemisphere. A small advance team left China last month. "This is a very hard task but we are full of confidence to succeed in this mission," one woman officer told state television. The force has spent three months training and passed exams administered by the UN.
■ France
Pierre Salinger dies
Pierre Salinger, who served as President John F. Kennedy's press secretary and later had a long career with ABC News, has died at a hospital in southern France. He was 79. Salinger died Saturday from heart failure following surgery last week at a hospital in Cavaillon to implant a pacemaker, his wife, Nicole "Poppy" Salinger, said in a telephone interview yesterday. Mrs. Salinger, spoke from Le Thon in the Provence region, where the couple moved four years ago to run a bed-and-breakfast inn. She said her husband moved to France because he was deeply opposed to the presidency of George W. Bush.
■ Poland
Museum honors priest
A museum dedicated to the life of a pro-Solidarity priest tortured and murdered by Poland's communist secret police opened Saturday, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the killing. The museum is situated in the cellar of Warsaw's St. Stanislaw church, where Father Jerzy Popieluszko's "Masses for the Homeland" attracted tens of thousands of worshippers. Popieluszko was abducted and killed by police on Oct. 19, 1984, and his body was stuffed in a sack weighed down with stones and thrown into the Vistula River. His grave is located in the church's courtyard.
■ Belarus
Vote held on leader's term
Belarusians voted yesterday in a referendum on whether to change this ex-Soviet republic's Constitution and permit authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to run for a third term. Voters also were electing lawmakers to the nation's 110-seat House of Representatives, but that legislative organ has little power. The EU and the US had expressed strong doubts that yesterday's election would meet democratic standards, warning that this already isolated nation in Eastern Europe might become further estranged from its European neighbors. Lukashenko, 50, was first elected on an anti-corruption platform in 1994.
■ Spain
Europeans row with Cuba
A political row erupted Saturday after Spain and the Netherlands vehemently protested Cuba's refusal to grant entry to three parliamentary deputies who had arrived in Havana to meet Cuban dissidents. Cuban authorities put Spanish deputy Jorge Moragas, who was traveling on a tourist visa, straight back on the plane on which he had arrived from Madrid. Spain immediately summoned Cuban ambassador Isabel Allende to protest the removal of Moragas.
■ Tajikistan
Russia ups troop presence
Russia will increase the number of its troops in Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, to further stability in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Dusanbe on Saturday. He arrived in the central Asian country earlier in the day to discuss security concerns with regional leaders. The two countries agreed on a practically free lease by Russia for 49 years of a military base, as well as on the handover to Russia of the military space observation center at Nurek. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that more than 5,000 troops would be stationed in the country. The space center will be handed over in exchange for the forgiveness of more than US$240 million of the nearly US$300 million which Dushanbe owes Moscow.
■ United Kingdom
Blair to take US missiles
Prime Minister Tony Blair has secretly agreed to let the US station interceptor missiles on British soil for the so-called "Son of Star Wars" defense system, according to a newspaper report yesterday. Britain has agreed "in principle" to a US request to site the interceptor missiles at an existing early warning radar center in Fylingdales, Yorkshire, northern England, the Independent on Sunday reported. According to the paper, the agreement was reached at a meeting last May in Washington attended by senior officials from the British embassy and the US State Department.
■ United Kingdom
Lawmaker slams Liverpool
The leader of Britain's main opposition party on Saturday ordered a legislator to apologize for a magazine article that depicted the people of Liverpool as senti-mental victims who nurse a "tribal grievance" against the rest of society. Conservative leader Michael Howard said he had told lawmaker Boris Johnson, who also edits The Spectator magazine, to go to the northwestern English city and say sorry. An unsigned editorial in the latest issue of the conservative weekly criticized the "extreme reaction" of Liverpudlians to the death of Ken Bigley, a Liverpool man who was abducted in Iraq last month, held hostage for three weeks and beheaded.
■ United States
Hailstorm causes accidents
A fast-moving storm dumped hail and rain along an 18km stretch of Interstate 95, triggering a string of collis-ions on Saturday that involved 92 vehicles. No deaths were reported, but authorities said 50 people were injured, some seriously, in 17 separate accidents on I-95 in suburban Baltimore. The wrecks were apparently triggered by sunlight shining off sleet dumped by the storm. The accidents started happening about 4:30 p.m. after hail and rain fell on the highway. A section of I-95 was closed in both directions, but authorities reopened all lanes late Saturday night.
■ United States
Fantasy game turns 30
Thousands of Dungeons & Dragons players gathered in game stores around the country Saturday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the grandfather of fantasy role-playing games -- a pop culture phenomenon that has influenced a myriad of video games, books and movies. An estimated 25,000 fans in 1,200 stores celebrated the anniversary Saturday, said Charles Ryan, brand manager for role-playing games at Wizards of the Coast, a Renton, Washington, com-pany that owns Dungeons & Dragons. Shaunnon Drake was at Batty's Best Comics & Games in Atlanta, where gamers, ranging in age from their early teens to mid-30s, munched pizza and played D&D through the afternoon.
■ United Kingdom
`Erotic gherkin' wins award
A new skyscraper in London popularly dubbed the "erotic gherkin" for its curvaceous shape has won one of Britain's top architecture prizes, organizers announced on Saturday. The building by British architect Norman Foster, officially called 30 St Mary Axe, its address, beat five other finalists to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize. The 40-story tower has swiftly become one of the most recognizable shapes on the London skyline since it was completed earlier this year. The circular, glass-panelled tower, rising to a pointed tip, acquired the "gherkin" nickname well before it was finished, and has also been dubbed "The Towering Innuendo" for its suggestive shape.
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
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the