■ China
Hope fades for miners
Rescue teams resigned themselves yesterday to pulling only corpses from a mine where 103 workers remained trapped after a gas blast, as Chinese media demanded investment to mechanize the industry and improve safety. So far 63 bodies have been hauled from Chenjiashan mine in Tongchuan city, Shaanxi Province following a gas explosion Sunday, Xinhua news agency said, citing Shaanxi provincial mining industry administration director Huo Shichang. Another 103 miners were trapped underground and presumed dead after one of the worst mining disasters in China for more than a decade. "The possibility of survival is virtually non-existent but the rescue program is still going. We will not give up hope," said a Shaanxi coal mine safety bureau official surnamed Chen.
■ Vietnam
Lover dies in grenade blast
A man in southern Vietnam killed himself and seriously injured five others when a grenade he was carrying exploded, local police said yesterday. Luong Pho Xam, 30, had an affair with his neighbor's wife, and was caught by Luong Phong Bi, the cuckolded husband, last week, said a police officer from Nghe An Province where the accident occurred. Xam was ashamed at being caught and worried that the neighbor's family would publicize the affair. Seeking to prevent this, he went to their house on Thursday to threaten them with a grenade, said the police officer, who declined to be named. As he was holding the grenade and threatening the family, it exploded, the police officer said.
■ China
Gasoline scooters banned
Shanghai will ban the use of gasoline powered scooters by the end of next year as part of a city-wide campaign to clean up its polluted environment, state press reported yesterday. "Some 190,000 gasoline scooters have already been eliminated from the city since the campaign started three years ago, and the 160,000 that are left will disappear next year," said Xu Zuxin, director of the Shanghai Environment-al Protection Bureau. Resi-dents must turn the old ones in will only be allowed to buy those that use liquified petroleum gas (LPG), a butane and propane mixture that has similar burning properties to natural gas, the China Daily said.
■ Thailand
Pair weds in ape ceremony
In a dense southern jungle, the male of the species called out for his mate, who gave a high-pitched response and eagerly slid down from an 8m tree into a loving embrace. And then Sam Lake presented Noga Russin with a wedding ring. The couple had met while working with gibbons on Phuket island, fell in love, and then decided to ape the simians in their own mating ritual. Lake, a 26-year-old Briton, and Russin, 28, from Israel, said they were impressed by the monoga-mous love-lives led by gibbons and vowed to follow that example.
■ Australia
Call blacklisting offered
A phone company is offering customers the chance to blacklist numbers before heading out for a night on the town so they can reduce the risk of making any embarrass-ing, incoherent late-night calls. A survey of 409 people by Virgin Mobile, a joint venture of The Virgin Group and Optus, found 95 percent made drunk calls. Of those calls, 30 percent were to ex-partners, 19 percent to current partners, and 36 percent to other people, including their bosses.
■ Germany
Nude Snow White fired
A German singer who plays Snow White has lost her job at Dresden's Christmas fair after posing for nude photos in a bathtub, Bild newspaper said on Monday. Fair organizers fired Samira, 22, after photos appeared in Bild and other publications showing her lying naked in a bathtub filled with soap suds and rose petals. Samira, whose surname was not given, has played Snow White for five years. Dresden's mayor and others who miss her performance are asking that she be reinstated.
■ Romania
Lotto fraudster wins jackpot
In an ironic twist of fortune, a former lottery con-man who served time for once claiming his winning US$1 million ticket was stolen, hit the jackpot in one of Romania's biggest pay outs ever, officials said Monday. Stelian Ogica, who was sentenced in 2001 to three years imprisonment by a Bucharest court for attempted swindle, won 1 billion leis (US$33,000), lottery officials aid. When Ogica was released from prison early last year he continued to play the lottery. His persistence paid off. "This time I wrote my name and address on the tickets so there would be no confusion," Ogica said. "I knew I was going to win."
■ United Kingdom
Muslims abandon Labour
British Muslims are deserting the ruling Labour Party in droves and reject Prime Minister Tony Blair's assurances that the fight against terror is not aimed at Islam, according to a poll yesterday. The large British Muslim community, numbered at between 1.6 and 2 million, also want Sharia courts to settle civil matters and working hours changed to incorporate Muslim prayer hours, according to the ICM poll published in the Guardian newspaper. Politically, Muslims are abandoning Labour, the party most of them previously supported, not for the Conservatives, but for the Liberal Democrats, the third largest party in Britain.
■ Italy
Mafia war kills two
The clan war pitting two Mafia groups struggling for control of the illegal drug market in Naples in southern Italy has claimed two more victims, one of them a man in his early 60s who was tortured to death. Sixty-two-year-old Salvatore Magistris, who was abandoned Oct. 30 lying in a pool of blood in a downtown plaza, died Monday in the hospital where he had been in a coma since the attack. According to police, Magistris was tortured when he refused to give the whereabouts of his son-in-law, who was wanted by the Di Lauro clan. In another incident late Sunday, a 30-year-old man was riddled with bullets near a subway station.
■ Italy
Unions go on strike
Italy's main trade unions stage a nationwide general strike yesterday to protest the economic policies of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Civil servants, and those employed in the public transport, banking, education and health sectors took part in the strike, the fifth of its kind since Berlusconi took office in 2001. Post offices and universities will remain shut for the day while banks will open in the afternoon. The strike was called to protest next year's budget, which unions claim is "unjust", and over stalled public sector contract negotiations. Street rallies are scheduled to take place in 70 cities, with major gatherings planned for Milan, Venice and Turin.
■ United States
Godzilla honored with star
Fifty years after he first lumbered from the sea to breathe fire, trample cities and thrill generations of filmgoers, Japan's most famous movie monster, Godzilla, was honored yesterday with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The gargantuan reptile is the latest in a pantheon of famous critters, including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker, to have his name enshrined on Hollywood Boulevard along with 2,200 flesh-and-blood stars.
■ United States
Deer hunter hunter charged
A laotian immigrant was charged with six counts of first-degree murder, and two counts of attempted murder Monday in connection with a deadly rampage in Wisconsin deer country eight days ago. Chai Vang, 36, was arrested the same day as the killings and is being held in lieu of a US$2.5 million. He is scheduled to make his first appearance in circuit court yesterday. The truck driver from St. Paul, Minnesota, has already admitted gunning down eight members of a deer hunting party following a confrontation with some of the party over the fact that he was trespassing on private property.
■ Spain
Neo-nazis arrested
Spanish police arrested 19 neo-Nazi youths after they beat up a man they found "dirty and badly dressed," Madrid police officials said on Monday. Officials said 12 of those arrested on Friday in the capital were minors, and four of them young girls, adding that their victim suffered a broken jaw in the attack. Police found an array of neo-Nazi items following the arrests, which were made thanks to a tip-off.
■ Saudi Arabia
Women vote in electoral first
Saudi businesswomen have made history by casting their votes for the first time in the board election of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, reported Saudi newspapers yesterday. It is the first time in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom that women have been allowed to vote in a significant election. Women are not eligible to take part in nationwide municipal elections to be held Feb. 10. Newspapers reported that a large number of women turned out fervently Monday to vote at the chamber's women's section. No female candidates were contesting the elections. In the past, legal male agents voted on behalf of the women.
■ United States
Muslim channel launches
The first English-language cable television channel aimed at US and Canadian Muslims is set to launch, its chairman said on Monday, seeking to show positive images of the fast-growing community and to give the US a realistic glimpse into Islamic life. "It was my wife's idea. She asked me to go and do it," said Muzzammil Hassan, a Pakistani-born ex-banker whose "Bridges TV" hits US airwaves yesterday. Programming ranges from Koranic and Islamic religious content to news, document-aries, soap operas and shows geared toward women and children. Hassan has high hopes for the news programming, but there will also be lighter fare, such as Allah Made Me Funny, which spotlights a Muslim comedy tour.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema