■ Japan
Empress ban may be lifted
Japan will set up a task force to consider allowing a reigning empress, an official said yesterday -- the government's first review of a post-World War II law that limits imperial succession to men. Japanese law bans women from ascending to the Chrysanthemum Throne. But no boy has been born to the Japanese royal family since the 1960s, and government officials have been fretting about how to solve the royals' most serious succession crisis in centuries. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said a 10-member task force comprised of government officials, legal experts and scholars would begin meeting in January to examine legal revisions.
■ China
Couple nabbed over bomb
Police have arrested a couple allegedly responsible for a bomb that killed eight people at a central China farmhouse, the government said yesterday. Li Xingxu and his wife, Hu Chunxiu, were arrested in Hunan Province on suspicion of planting the bomb last week as part of a revenge plot, Xinhua reported. Police believe Hu stole the explosives from a fireworks factory. The Dec. 23 blast killed farmer Li Xingkui, six members of his family and a friend. The dead included an 8-month-old baby. The husband and wife were allegedly furious with the farmer, Li, for giving evidence against them during an assault case earlier this year, the report said.
■ France
Ten die in explosion
Ten people were killed, 14 were injured and several were missing after an explosion on Sunday in an apartment block in Mulhouse, eastern France. It was believed to have been due to a gas leak, rescue services said early yesterday. Firefighters worked through the night to search for victims of the blast, which devastated a four-storey building that was believed to house around 30 people. Early yesterday, officials said they had pulled eight bodies from the ruins and located two others, but had not yet been able to extricate them from the rubble.
■ South Korea
Roh wants to talk to Kim
South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun said he is ready to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il -- but doesn't think it's possible amid current international efforts to persuade the communist North to give up its nuclear ambitions. The North Korean leader had agreed to visit the South after hosting former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang for a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. But details of the proposed visit were never finalized. "If a summit is possible, I intend to accept it irrespective of time or place," Roh said in an interview published yesterday in Seoul's Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper.
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