■ China
Churchgoers detained
More than 200 members and clergy have been detained, a Shanghai church closed down and two US tourists harrassed in a renewed ccrackdown on unauthorized religious activity, a US-based activist says. The two Americans, both theological students, were detained last Tuesday while attending a church service with 41 Chinese at a home in Lutou, Hubei Province, Bob Fu, a church monitor based in Texas, said yesterday. The pair were released after seven hours of questioning. Police later released 30 of the 41 church members they had detained, Fu said. Shanghai officials ordered a 16-year-old church with 400 members to close down on July 26, Fu said, while about 100 high-school students attending a Bible school organized by their parents were interrogated by police on July 22 in Wanzhuang, Hebei Province.
■ Nepal
Army hunts soldiers
The government rushed hundreds of troops to the remote northwest to hunt for 146 soldiers missing after fierce fighting with Maoist rebels, but bad weather was hampering operations, a senior army officer said yesterday. Heavy monsoon rains were making it difficult for helicopters to land near the site of the weekend gun battle in the Kalikot district, the officer said. The rebels claimed to have killed 159 troops.
■ Malaysia
Haze sparks burning ban
The government has banned most forms of open burning, including outdoor cooking, in a desperate measure to ease the stifling haze blanketing Kuala Lumpur and surrounding areas due to smoke from forest fires in Indonesia.Visibility has been reduced to about 1km for the past week.
■ Hong Kong
Visit a suicide theme park?
A Hong Kong official said one of the territory's tiny islands could make a killing with a novel theme park based on its unsavoury reputation as a suicide spot, a media report said yesterday. The morbid suggestion to create a ghost-town attraction where guests were dared to spend the night in "haunted flats" came at a meeting of local leaders on little Cheung Chau island. Councillor Lam Kit-sing said the island should capitalize on the grisly reputation of one of its holiday homes, where 20 people have taken their lives in the past eight years. Another five people attempted suicide there.
■ Australia
Lost Vivaldi work performed
A small part of a newly identified choral work by baroque Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi was played for the first time in about 250 years yesterday after being uncovered by an Australian academic. Janice Stockigt of the University of Melbourne said the 11-movement Dixit Dominus for choir and soloists, which she uncovered in Dresden this year, would be played in full in the German city next year. Stockigt said the work had previously been attributed to Baldassarre Galuppi, a Venetian contemporary of Vivaldi, since it first appeared in Galuppi's name in Dresden's Catholic Court Church in the 1750s.
■ China
Protesters blocked, detained
Chinese villagers resettled to make way for the massive Three Gorges dam project were harassed by officials and prevented from petitioning the central government about pollution, a human rights group said yesterday. Five villagers representing the 500 residents of Yangguidian, a village in central Hubei Province, were taken off a bus by about 40 police officers on Saturday as they tried to travel to Beijing, the New York-based group Human Rights in China said in a statement. The villagers were relocated to Yangguidian in 1993 in order to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project, it said.
RSS