■ China
Mine explosion kills 13
An underground gas explosion in a Chinese coal mine killed 13 people and injured nine, a news report said yesterday. The explosion struck the Niuxinhui Coal Mine in the northern province of Shanxi on Friday afternoon, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing local industrial safety officials. The cause of the blast was under investigation, Xinhua said. It said the mine was undergoing an expansion project at the time.
■ COSTA RICA
Chinese buy visas
Chinese mafia members have offered millions of dollars to Costa Rican officials to buy visas for Chinese nationals seeking to sneak through the country into the US, an official said in a report on Friday. A Chinese mafia member is alleged to have contacted Migration and Foreign Nationals affairs chief Mario Zamora offering him US$2.5 million if his office began processing 500 visas last November, the daily La Nacion reported. "There were death threats in the event anything happened" to derail the process, Zamora said.
■ MALAYSIA
Explosions were `accidental'
Malaysia's army has retracted its claim that two grenade explosions along the border with Thailand this week were an attack on its soldiers, saying the ordnance went off accidentally. Four soldiers were hurt in the pre-dawn blasts at Malaysia's Ban Din Samoe post in northern Kedah State on Wednesday. "What actually happened is an accidental discharge of the grenades, and there was no intrusion," deputy army chief Lieutenant General Muhammad Ismail Jamaluddin said on Friday night. He said investigations have shown that the assault claim was mistaken.
■ Pakistan
Islamabad pans terror claim
Government authorities protested on Friday over a claim by US director of intelligence John Negroponte that al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders were hiding inside Pakistan. Since December 2001, western intelligence agencies have presumed the al-Qaeda leader and his top Taliban allies were hiding in the highland tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Negroponte singled out Pakistan as the location of the jihadist leaders' hideout, saying that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were rebuilding a network there.
■ TAJIKISTAN
Drug seizures rise
Seizures of illegal drugs rose last year slightly to 5 tonnes, the nation's chief anti-narcotics official said on Friday. Drugs enforcement chief Fakhriddin Jonmakhmadov gave no explanation for the increase. Jonmakhmadov also said his agency had collaborated with their Afghan counterparts to destroy seven laboratories processing heroin, and seize about a tonne of drugs on Afghan territory. The nation shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan, the world's largest heroin producer, and has become a major transit route for drugs smuggled to Europe and the former Soviet Union.
■ SRI LANKA
Landslide rescue operation
Soldiers and air force helicopters intensified rescue operations in the central tea growing region of Nuwara Eliya yesterday, where landslides killed at least 17 people and left others feared trapped, officials said. The landslides -- triggered by heavy rains -- damaged at least 1,600 homes, leaving an estimated 9,000 people homeless across 15 villages in the mountainous region known for its lush tea gardens and which is prone to landslides, the Defense Ministry said. "Our forces have redoubled efforts and we have rescued dozens of people," military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said in the capital, Colombo.
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