■ China
Baby formula recalled
Beijing has ordered the recall of baby formula with dangerously low nutritional value, two years after dozens of babies died after drinking counterfeit formula, news reports said yesterday. The recall was ordered by the Health Ministry after inspectors discovered the inferior formula at rural markets, the official Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua didn't say whether any deaths or injuries were blamed on the formula or whether the producer was suspected of knowingly selling an inferior product.
■ China
Two ships sank, 57 missing
A Panamanian freighter and Chinese fishing boat sank within hours of each other in rough seas off eastern Fujian Province, leaving 57 sailors missing, emergency services and official media reported yesterday. Rescuers were still searching for 33 of the freighter's 37-member crew after it sank late on Thursday about 5km from Pingtan island, an official with the provincial maritime rescue center said. A Chinese fishing boat with 27 people on board sank in the same area early yesterday, reports said. Three sailors were rescued, but rest have yet to be found, Xinhua said.
■ Philippines
Arroyo orders commutation
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered the commutation to life imprisonment of the death sentences of 280 convicts for humanitarian reasons, a government statement said on Thursday. Arroyo issued the order on Wednesday after a visit to the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa, where more than 1,000 death convicts are imprisoned. She directed the department of justice and the Board of Pardons and Parole to immediately facilitate the commutation, it said.
■ Australia
Not so lucky refugee
Ruol Agang thought himself one of the luckiest men alive last year when he was picked to be among the 5,561 Sudanese resettled in Australia under a humanitarian program. It wasn't to be: four months after arriving in Sydney with his wife and four children, Agang was beaten to death on the street. The 28-year-old had been pelted with eggs by a group of youths in a car. He retaliated, throwing a drink can at the vehicle. It was then that he was bashed senseless. Agang's cousin, Majok Atok, voiced the despair of Sydney's growing Sudanese community. "When we came here we felt we had come to a safe place where nobody could be killed," Atok said. "We ran away from killing."
■ New Zealand
Canine protest planned
Farmers, angry at a new law making microchip identification of their dogs compulsory, are planning an offbeat canine protest outside parliament. "Our dogs will piss on the steps to parliament ... and we won't clean anything up," a farmers' spokesman, Bryan Hocken, warned yesterday. "And if we end up in jail, then we'll take our dogs with us and they'll do their business on the floors there as well." The new law was framed after a series of attacks on people and is aimed to allow instant identification after a dog attack. Farmers are upset they may have to pay NZ$50-NZ$110 (US$33-US$73) to microchip each dog.
■ Japan
One last shot
The nation's obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased. "I get the sense that people no longer respect the dead. It's disturbing," a funeral director told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. At one ceremony several people gathered round the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse, as preparations were made to begin a cremation, she was quoted as saying. "I'm sure the deceased would never want their faces photographed," she said. But others called it a form of a memento in the modern age.
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