■ China
Courts beef up security
China has told its widely criticized courts to install metal detectors and beef up security following a series of attacks on judges, a newspaper said yesterday. Courts should separate judges' benches from the public, install monitoring equipment and have police escort judges to and from the building, China's Supreme Court and top prosecuting body ordered, the Beijing News said. A female judge was killed in her office in eastern Jiangsu province earlier this year, a judge in Beijing was run over and then beaten up by the driver, and in June a mob of more than 20 people stormed a court on the outskirts of the capital and assaulted a judge, the newspaper said.
■ Philippines
Gang leader nabbed
Philippine troops have arrested a leader of a notorious kidnap-for-ransom syndicate that abducted an Italian priest and five Chinese engineers in the south in 2001, an official said yesterday. Norham Amil, alias Commander Ramsie, was arrested late on Tuesday at an army checkpoint in the town of Leon Postigo in Zamboanga del Norte Province, 780km south of Manila, army chief Lieutenant General Hermogenes Esperon said.
■ Hong Kong
Tsang's rating rises
The popularity of Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) has reached a new high with three out of four people saying they would give him their vote if the city had free elections. The approval rating of the 60-year-old career civil servant, who succeeded Tung Chee-hwa (董建華) in June, reached 74.8 percent in the first two weeks of this month, according to a survey published yesterday.
■ Indonesia
Car bomber sentenced
An Indonesian court yesterday sentenced a second Islamic militant to death for involvement in last year's suicide car bomb attack outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta. The South Jakarta court found Ahmad Hasan guilty of helping build the bomb and plot the attack with Malaysian fugitive Azahari bin Husin, a senior militant linked to al-Qaeda and the alleged mastermind of the bombing that killed 10 Indonesians. The same court on Tuesday sentenced Rois, also known as Iwan Dharmawan and the leading defendant in custody over the bombing, to death.
■ Japan
Koizumi's ratings soar
Public support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has jumped after his weekend election victory, but many voters are worried that his party's big majority will make the popular Japanese leader arrogant. Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) took 296 of the 480 seats in parliament's lower house in Sunday's election. The LDP's coalition partner also took 31 seats, giving the ruling bloc more than the two-thirds of seats needed to dominate the chamber with majorities in all committees and override objections from the upper house if need be. Koizumi had gambled his premiership by calling the election when rebels within his party joined the opposition to vote down his postal privatization bills in the upper house last month.
■ Hong Kong
Police search for officer
More than 300 police officers were scouring one of Hong Kong's rural country parks yesterday for a missing police officer, three days after he made a desperate call for help. Constable Ting Li-wah, 45, was off duty and hiking alone in a remote area of Sai Kung Country Park when he dialed the emergency services apparently suffering from heatstroke or exhaustion. His last words in an incoherent, seven-minute call on Sunday were "help, help, help" before the line went dead, police say, sparking fears he may have lost consciousness.
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