■ China
Angry villagers kill officer
Villagers beat to death a policeman in Guangdong Province as they vented their anger at officers accused of allowing people to drown in a pond after a raid on a gambling party, police and media reports said yesterday. The melee began when 11 police were sent to break up an illegal card game involving 30 people on Wednesday in Qingyuan, the security bureau said in a statement. Some of the fleeing gambling suspects jumped into a deep pond, and police saved one who couldn't swim but another drowned, it said. But an unidentified villager was quoted by Hong Kong's Sing Tao Daily as saying that police would not rescue some of the villagers and even restrained people from saving them. The police statement said the gamblers were furious and incited other villagers to beat and stone the officers, killing one and injuring three others.
■ China
Cannoneer arrested
A farmer who led a cannon attack on a neighboring village in southern Guangxi has been captured after having eluded officials for 10 months, the Beijing News reported yesterday. The farmer, surnamed Ye, had devised 11 homemade cannons that he and fellow villagers used in two assaults on a neighboring village last April in a dispute over access to a nearby forest, according to the report. He told officials that a fellow villager had come up with the idea to construct cannons. Mu villagers fired 13 cannons on April 14 last year, injuring one person, according to the account. The newspaper said Ye and his fellow villagers thought the first attack was inadequate and fired more cannons the next day. About 500 police officers were deployed to intervene but Ye escaped, police said.
■ Japan
Blade found in tuna can
Nichiro Corp said yesterday it will recall 4.8 million cans of tuna and dispose of the meat after a man found a small blade in a product packaged in Vietnam. Japan's third-largest seafood producer said a man in Osaka found a blade measuring 1.9cm by 1.1cm, after opening a can. The cans were packaged in 2005 in a factory in Vietnam which will be put under investigation, a company spokeswoman said.
■ Indonesia
Fishermen find ammunition
A couple of fishermen diving to catch lobsters off the coast near Kupang found a totally different catch -- close to 500 assorted bullets, police said on Thursday. "They found several sacks on the bottom of the sea some 11m down this morning and after opening them quickly reported it to the marine police," East Nusa Tenggara Province chief detective Ricky Sihotang said by telephone. He said police had counted the contents of the bag and found 498 bullets of various calibres. Sihotang declined to speculate on the owners of the ammunition but said the bullets had probably not been in the sea for long as they were not rusty.
■ Australia
Activists rescued by whalers
Two activists harassing a Japanese whaling boat off Antarctica were lost for seven hours in bad weather yesterday before being rescued with the Japanese vessel's help, colleagues said. The Japanese crew helped search for the pair, who were trying to disrupt the whale hunt when they got lost in extreme fog in their inflatable boat, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said. "We called them and thanked them for that but said we are still planning on following [them]," said the group's international director Jonny Vasic. "It's kind of the rule of the sea and we would do the same," he said. "We are not out to hurt anybody and neither are they." The pair, an Australian and a US national, were ultimately found by the crew of their own vessel, the Farley Mowat.
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