■ Pakistan
Telco workers may strike
Pakistan army and paramilitary troops were Sunday guarding the sensitive telephone facilities across the country after workers threatened a nationwide strike next week against the proposed partial privatization of the state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Limited Company (PTCL). "Security has been beefed up on 150 telephone exchanges and other related sensitive installations across the country," police officials said. Army and paramilitary troops were moved to safeguard telephone facilities after days of talks between the government and representatives of the workers collapsed on Saturday. The government has announced June 18 as the new date for the sale of 26 per cent of PTCL after the open bidding scheduled for last June 10 was postponed.
■ India
Advani irrelevent: survey
A majority of India's youth believe the controversy over veteran leader Lal Krishna Advani's remarks on the founder of Pakistan is not relevant today, a newspaper survey showed yesterday. On a visit to Pakistan this month, the man credited with building up the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) praised the late Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a man the Hindu right -- committed to one day reuniting India and Pakistan -- blames for the 1947 partitioning of the subcontinent. Advani's comments infuriated many hardline Hindu allies, particularly the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), regarded as the BJP's ideological parent. The Hindustan Times survey of 921 people between 18 and 25 showed the Jinnah debate rated a low 3.5 on a relevance scale of 10 while 54 percent thought India's politicians were stuck in the past.
■ Australia
Peace activists arrested
Police yesterday arrested 10 peace activists who tried to disrupt a joint military exercise at Shoalwater base involving more than 17,000 Australian and US troops. Police said six demonstrators were arrested after they scaled a fence at the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area in Queensland state carrying fake coffins bearing the names of Iraq war dead. "The six protesters gained entry to the grounds and refused to leave despite being asked a number of times," police said. Another four were arrested for delaying tanks and armored personnel carriers from entering the base; all 10 were released on bail. Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition spokeswoman Hannah Middleton said, "More than 70 percent of Australians bitterly opposed our involvement in the Iraq war yet the government continues to risk the lives of our young people in a war that is illegal and immoral."
■ South Korea
Fugitive tycoon to return
The fugitive former chairman of South Korea's collapsed Daewoo Group conglomerate is expected to return home on Tuesday after fleeing about six years ago. Kim Woo-choong is likely to face arrest upon arrival at Incheon International Airport near Seoul. Daewoo, once South Korea's fourth-largest conglomerate, collapsed in the aftermath of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Kim had been spotted in Vietnam in April. Kim, one of South Korea's most wanted fugitives, is accused of having falsified Daewoo's accounts to draw billions of dollars in illegal bank loans. Police believe he has been traveling in Europe since fleeing South Korea, and say he also has French citizenship.
■ Japan
Heat fells 22 runners
Twenty-two runners taking part in a road race in Tokyo yesterday were taken to the hospital after they collapsed in the heat and humidity of the hottest day in the city so far this year. Five of them were in serious condition but released from hospital within the day. Temperatures hit 29.8?C (85.6?F) in central Tokyo, the highest so far this year, with humidity of 55 percent. Some 6,000 people were taking part in the popular annual race, which covers 10km in central Tokyo.
■ India
PM visits battlefield
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited soldiers at the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battlefield, in Kashmir and spoke of the need for peace with rival Pakistan. Singh, 72, is the first premier to travel to the Siachen base camp. The 76km-long glacier at a height of over 6,000m has been the inhospitable site of a military stand-off between India and Pakistan since 1984. "Siachen is called the highest battlefield, where living is very difficult," he told soldiers. "Now the time has come to make efforts to convert this battlefield into a peace mountain." However, he made it clear that "in the pursuit of peace we cannot accept any changes in the established boundaries."
■ Thailand
PM meets with Powell
The prime minister yesterday told visiting former US Secretary of State Colin Powell that the almost daily violence in his country is not linked to a broader regional terror network. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that assessment agrees with US intelligence, which also said the violence is probably homegrown. But some of Thaksin's own officials say there are growing indications that links do exist with regional networks, especially in the areas of finance, training and ideology.
■ France
Hidden art may be revealed
Works by the great Impressionists, which have been hidden in bank vaults for up to four generations, could come into public view for the first time as a result of a feud within one of the world's leading art collecting families. Alec and Guy Wildenstein, whose father Daniel died four years ago, will challenge a French court ruling in favor of their 71-year- old stepmother Sylvia to break up the huge private collection, believed to include Renoirs, Monets and Manets. The brothers' legal move comes in the wake of an earlier ruling that Mrs Wildenstein should receive a share of the estate because Alec, now 64, and Guy, 60, misled her into signing away her inheritance rights.
■ Italy
Procreation law vote begins
Italians began voting yesterday in a two-day referendum on the liberalization of a tough law regulating assisted procreation and banning research on embryos. The law -- referred to by its number, "Law 40" -- was passed last year in a bid to end Italy's reputation as a bioethics "Wild West," where in the 1990s women in their 60s were medically assisted to have children. Womens' groups and lawmakers, however, say the new law was too restrictive and collected 4 million signatures to back a court action to have the most stringent parts of the law subjected to a referendum.
■ United Kingdom
William the brightest royal
Prince William is now Britain's brainiest royal. He made history on Saturday when he was awarded an upper second honors degree -- an achievement that outstrips all his predecessors. The 22-year-old's father left Trinity College, Cambridge, with a lower second-class degree (2:2) in history and his uncle, the Earl of Wessex, gained a similar qualification in the same subject, from Jesus College, Cambridge. No other members of the royal family have attended university. William's mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, left school with an exam pass in domestic science while his brother, Prince Harry, opted for a military career at Sandhurst over academia.
■ Portugal
Revolutionary ex-PM dies
Vasco Goncalves, a former prime minister who played a key part in the 1974 April revolution that toppled 48 years of right-wing dictatorship in Portugal, is dead, the government said. He was 83. General Goncalves was prime minister of four socialist provisional governments between 1974 and 1975 before being ousted by a more moderate wing in August 1975. As one of the "captains of April," Goncalves was involved in organizing and carrying out the revolution that ushered in the country's first free elections.
■ Gaza Strip
Four executed for murder
The Palestinian Authority executed four Palestinians, convicted by the authority's civil court for a first degree murder early yesterday, a senior Palestinian security official reported. Interior ministry spokesman Tawfeek Abu Khousa said that three of the convicted were hanged in the national security headquarters and one was shot by firing squad at the Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City. Abu Khousa said the four were involved in murdering innocent civilians. Families of the murder victims had repeatedly demonstrated in Gaza, saying their loved ones were killed in "cold blood" without being punished.
■ Kuwait
First female minister
The Kuwaiti government has appointed its first female Cabinet minister, a month after lawmakers in this oil-rich nation granted women the right to vote and run for office, state-owned television reported yesterday. Political science teacher Massouma al-Mubarak, a women's rights activist and columnist, was given the planning and administrative development portfolios, Prime Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah was quoted as saying. "I'm happy," al-Mubarak, 54, told reporters. "This honor is not bestowed on my person but on every woman who fought to prove that Kuwaiti women are capable."
■ Israel
China arms sales anger US
A dispute between Israel and Washington over Israeli arms sales to China is deepening after months of US sanctions on joint military projects, the Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday. Washington has demanded that its close ally Israel provide details of more than 60 recent security deals with China and its arms export trade in general, the newspaper reported on its front page. In the interim, the US has suspended cooperation with the Israeli air force on developing a new jet in the Joint Strike Fighter project and other high-tech military equipment used by ground troops. Contact has also been "disrupted" at the top echelon between the Israeli defense ministry and the Pentagon, with Israeli phone calls not answered, the newspaper said.
■ N Ireland
IRA man pulled from river
Police said Saturday they have pulled a car out of a canal with the suspected remains of an alleged IRA man whose disappearance two years ago was linked to the paramilitary group. The blue Volkswagen Golf pulled out of Newry Canal was similar to the one that Gareath O'Connor, 24, was last seen in when he left his home in Armagh city in May 2003. No formal identification of the body inside the vehicle has been made, pending a post mortem, but the Police Service of Northern Ireland said O'Connor's family was being kept abreast of developments. O'Connor had been charged with membership in the Irish Republican Army when he was reported missing after he failed to report to police as part of his pre-trial bail conditions.
■ Brazil
Firms behind graft scandal
Private and state companies were financing the alleged vote-buying scandal in Congress, the congressman who made the corruption allegations earlier in the week told Brazil's largest newspaper yesterday. Representative Roberto Jefferson, who last Monday claimed President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's Workers Party paid monthly "allowances" of more than US$12,000 to other congressmen, said the bribe money was collected from the companies by a man who works with Delubio Soares, the Workers Party treasurer accused of making the reported payoffs.
■ United States
Paper gets journalism award
The co-founder of a Tijuana-based weekly newspaper that has investigated government corruption and drug cartels for more than a decade, and whose editors have repeatedly been the targets of assassination attempts, received Southern California's top journalism honor Saturday night. Jesus Blancornelas, 68, who founded the weekly Zeta in 1980 and is an editor of the paper, was wounded in a 1997 assassination attempt in which his bodyguard was killed.
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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
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