■ Singapore
Illegal masseuses nabbed
Seventy-seven women from China, Malaysia and Thailand have been arrested in Singapore following a crackdown on illegal massage parlors, police said yesterday. The arrests were carried out during a three-day operation that began on June 30, a police statement said. Police have stepped up checks on massage parlors amid increasing public concern over the proliferation of unlicensed establishments, which often solicit sex under the pretext of offering "traditional" massages.
■ Bangladesh
Strike shuts down country
Major towns and cities were at a standstill yesterday as opposition parties enforced a nationwide shutdown in protest at the death of an activist, police said. The main opposition Awami League said one of its members died on Sunday during a protest after being hit by a tear gas shell at Dhaka's main bus terminal. Police are investigating if he suffered a stroke after leaving the scene of the protest. The strike, called by a 14-party opposition alliance led by the league, is the latest in a string of opposition-enforced stoppages. Most have been called as part of the alliance's campaign for electoral reforms ahead of an election scheduled for January.
■ Philippines
Arroyo appoints police chief
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday appointed a new police chief amid a spate of extra-judicial killings in the country. Deputy Director General Oscar Calderon takes over as national police chief today when Director General Arturo Lomibao retires from the service. Calderon, the most senior among the candidates, denied speculation that he was chosen for the position because he is a distant relative of Arroyo. "I deserve the post," he said.
■ Russia
Joint exercises planned
Russia and China will stage joint military exercises for the second time following last year's first-ever Russo-Chinese war games, the chief of the Russian General Staff was quoted as saying yesterday. General Yuri Baluyevsky said he had agreed with his Chinese counterpart General Liang Guanglie (梁光烈) that the next round of maneuvers would be held in Russia, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Baluyevsky declined to disclose the date of the exercises. In August last year, some 10,000 troops, mostly Chinese and about 1,800 Russians, took part in major drills in the Shandong peninsula in the Yellow Sea.
■ United Kingdom
Bone-fused limbs developed
British scientists have developed the technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to a human skeleton, press reports said on Monday. The concept of growing skin tissue around metal, a staple of science fiction films such as The Terminator, was realized by researchers at University College London. It allows the artificial limb to breach the skin without risk of infection. According to the Times, the breakthrough was reached after a detailed study of the way skin seals around deers' antlers. It paves the way for significant advances in the technology of artificial limbs, including the use of bionic limbs controlled robotically by nerve impulses.
■ Ireland
Bomb threat clears airport
Police ordered the emergency evacuation of Dublin International Airport yesterday after a man claiming to have a bomb in a suitcase was arrested in the airport's arrivals hall. Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochana, said several of its units and the Irish army bomb squad were being dispatched to the airport, about 15km north of central Dublin, but no explosive device was immediately found. Siobhan Moore, spokeswoman for the Dublin Airport Authority, said all travelers and staff had been evacuated from the airport terminal to nearby car-parking spaces or to the sidewalks outside, while all flights out of the airport would be grounded.
■ United Kingdom
Blair talks troop drawdown
Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that "significant numbers" of British troops could be withdrawn from Iraq within 18 months. British forces would remain in the country for as long as the Iraqi government wished them to, Blair said before the senior members of parliament who make up the Commons Liaison Committee. "I suspect over the next 18 months there will obviously be opportunities to draw down significant numbers of British troops because the capacity of the Iraqi troops will build up," he added.
■ Chad
Rebels attack border town
Chadian rebels attacked an eastern town near the border with Sudan on Monday but the government said its soldiers had put down the assault, killing several insurgents and taking a number of prisoners. In turn, the rebels said they had entered the town of Ade and claimed victory for their fighters, saying they were chasing off fleeing remnants of the government force. It was not immediately possible to verify either version of events. "The Chadian army is chasing some of the survivors in their disarray towards the Sudanese border," Chadian Communications Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said in a statement.
■ United States
War protesters stop eating
Peace activists -- including the Granny Peace Brigade -- were to begin a hunger strike yesterday to protest the US war in Iraq. "We are involved in an immoral, illegal unconscionable war in Iraq," said Vinie Burrows on Monday, a great-grandmother who was one of 18 members of the Granny Peace Brigade who left New York on June 24 for antiwar demonstrations near the White House yesterday, Independence Day in the US. The women joined anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, Vietnam War era Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and human rights advocate Dick Gregory for a short march to a statue of Mahatma Ghandi on Washington's Embassy Row.
■ United States
Navy's use of sonar halted
A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order to stop the US Navy using sonar during training near Hawaii because it might hurt or even kill whales and other marine mammals. The US District Court Central District of California said the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sought the injunction, offered "considerable convincing scientific evidence" showing military sonar can harm marine animals.
■ United States
Lieberman has `insurance'
Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 now challenged for supporting the Iraq war, said on Monday that he would run for re-election as an independent if he loses his party's primary. Lieberman, 64, said he plans to collect enough signatures to run as an independent candidate in November if he loses the Democratic nomination to a self-financed neophyte who has criticized his willingness to support Republican President George W. Bush on the war and other issues. "I'm essentially taking out an insurance policy," Lieberman told CNN.
■ United States
Asteroid skims past Earth
An asteroid hurtling through space came within a hair's breadth -- in astronomical terms, at least -- of crashing into the Earth early on Monday, US scientists said. Apollo Asteroid 2004 XP14 was discovered by the Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which claims the title of "the world's principal detector of asteroids" said Roger Sudbury, a spokesman for the lab. "We were the discoverer," said Sudbury of the Apollo Asteroid 2004 XP14, which passed some 432,000km from the Earth at 0425 GMT. The distance between the two bodies was slightly greater than that between the Earth and the moon -- a close shave in the vastness of outer space.
■ United States
Plan made for Castro's death
The US should be prepared to move quickly to pour aid and advisers into Cuba in the event of Fidel Castro's death, to turn the island away from communist rule, a government report due for release this week will recommend. The report, the second from a group set up by US President George W. Bush three years ago to intensify US pressure for regime change in Cuba, calls for US$80 million to be put aside to step up opposition to Castro. It also warns that US efforts to bring down the communist system that has governed Cuba since 1959 could be undone by Venezuela's leftwing president, Hugo Chavez, who could use his oil wealth to try to continue Castro's legacy.
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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