■ AustraliaInjured BASE jumper dies
An Australian parachutist critically injured in a jump from China's tallest building earlier this month died yesterday in a Canberra hospital. World-renowned BASE jumper Roland "Slim" Simpson, 34, had been declared brain dead shortly after a failed jump from Shanghai's 421m Jinmao Tower on Oct. 5. Simpson was among 38 BASE jumpers from 16 nations invited to jump from the tower. Simpson had made more then 1,200 jumps. In BASE jumping -- an acronym for building, antenna, span and earth -- people skydive from a permanent surface rather than from an aircraft.
■ Singapore
Hoax caller goes to jail
A food seller in Singapore has been jailed for a year for making a hoax call claiming a group of truck drivers delivering ice from Malaysia were actually planning to bomb the city-state, the Straits Times reported yesterday. Ang Teck Lee, 42, pleaded guilty in court on Friday to lying to police when he rang an emergency hotline last month. The Singapore government, a staunch US ally in the war against terrorism, has frequently warned its citizens the city-state is a target for extremists.
■ China
HK, China agree on rulings
Hong Kong and China have agreed to recognize each other's civil court rulings, newspapers reported yesterday. Although the former British colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong maintains separate legal, political and economic systems from the mainland. Huang Song, vice president of China's Supreme People's Court, announced the agreement to recognize each other's civil rulings after meeting with representatives from the Hong Kong Bar Association in Beijing on Friday. But he said the two sides are still negotiating the scope of the deal, with Hong Kong resisting China's demands to include rulings on copyright violations, labor disputes and public listings, the Sing Tao Daily reported.
■ Japan
BSE testing discussed
Japan and the US narrowed their differences over testing standards for mad-cow disease and agreed to work toward reopening Japanese markets to US beef after three days of arduous talks that ended yesterday. Meanwhile, a dairy cow from western Japan tested positive for the bovine disease in preliminary tests, an official said. If confirmed, the cow from Mie prefecture would be Japan's 15th animal with the fatal brain-wasting illness, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. US and Japanese officials reviewed a Japanese proposal to exempt cows younger than 20 months from testing.
■ Australia
Evidence of infected vaccine
The Australian government said yesterday it will investigate a report that a polio vaccine contaminated with a virus linked to cancers was knowingly released by a government agency in the 1960s. The Age newspaper said it had uncovered evidence that almost three million doses of the Salk polio vaccine produced between 1956 and 1962 were contaminated by a monkey virus linked to a range of cancers. At least four batches of the vaccine contaminated by the virus known as Simian Virus 40 or SV40 were knowingly released by the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. Research conducted by the laboratories in 1962, but never made public, reportedly showed the monkey virus was a potential cause of cancer in humans.
■ United NationsTraining request rejected
The UN won't train judges or prosecutors for the Iraqi tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein and members of his regime because it has no mandate to do so and doesn't work with courts that can impose the death penalty, a UN spokesman said Friday. "The Secretary-General recently stated that UN officials should not be directly involved in lending assistance to any court or tribunal that is empowered to impose the death penalty," Stephane Dujarric said at a press conference. Dujarric said the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, Netherlands, had been asked to train Iraqi prosecutors and judges.
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