■ CHINA
Opium smuggler sentenced
An illiterate 80-year-old woman has been given a suspended death sentence by a court for smuggling opium, state media reported yesterday. The woman, Zhang Shouzhen from Guizhou Province, was going to use the 10,000 yuan (US$1,290) she earned from smuggling 8kg of opium to Beijing to pay for her grave plot, Xinhua news agency said. "I had wanted the money for a good plot of land as my graveyard," Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying at her trial, where she broke down in tears. Zhang will remain in prison for two years, after which, if she shows good behavior, her sentence could be commuted to a life term.
■ INDIA
Hospital rape suspected
Police were investigating if rape was behind a terminally ill cancer patient becoming pregnant during her stay at one of the country's top hospitals last year. The 16-year-old girl, who suffers from bone and soft tissue tumor, lodged a rape complaint with police at the weekend after she was told by doctors that she was pregnant. Police said the girl named two attendants at the Tata Memorial Hospital as responsible for raping her while she was in a semi-conscious state after surgery at the hospital in the western city of Mumbai in November last year. "It's hundred percent sure she is pregnant," Anil Nalawade, police assistant commissioner, said. The girl got pregnant about five months ago. Hospital authorities said they were probing the allegations.
■ JAPAN
Hotline with China planned
Japan and China are working to set up a 24-hour hotline between their armed forces to make emergency contact easier, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported in its evening edition yesterday. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) visited Japan last week on the first visit by a Chinese leader since 2000, and he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to set up a contact system between the militaries of the two Asian giants, the paper added. The hotline would aim primarily at preventing incidents such as confrontations between ships and aircraft provoked by intrusions into the other nation's waters or air space, the Yomiuri said. Official agreement to launch the hotline would be reached at a bilateral meeting of defense officials set for September, it said.
■ PHILIPPINES
Rebels allow immunization
Thousands of infants in southern Philippine areas made inaccessible by a decades-long armed conflict will receive immunization shots under a landmark deal between the UN's children fund and Muslim rebels, officials said yesterday. The "Days of Peace" campaign that starts yesterday in the Mindanao region, where Muslim rebels have been fighting for self-rule, will aim to vaccinate about 30,000 children against preventable diseases, UNICEF said in a statement.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Spy sentenced to nine years
A court sentenced a Korean-American yesterday to nine years in prison for spying for North Korea in the largest espionage case since the two Koreas began political reconciliation in 2000. The Seoul District Court also handed prison terms of four to six years to four South Koreans for violating the country's draconian anti-communist National Security Law. Prosecutors said Michael Jang was the group's ring leader. Jang acted on Pyongyang's orders to stir up anti-US sentiment during a visit by US President George W. Bush to South Korea in 2005, they said.
■ HUNGARY
Bunnies block busy road
Five thousand rabbits were blocking a Hungarian highway yesterday after the truck that was carrying them crashed. The animals came free after the truck collided with another vehicle and overturned, police officials said. The M1 highway -- the main road connection between the capitals of Hungary and Austria -- was expected to be closed for several hours while authorities tried to gather the loose animals, media reported. Highway Patrol Spokeswoman Viktoria Galik could not immediately be reached for comment.
■ IRELAND
Villagers want `harlot' back
A village in southwestern Ireland has won another round in a battle to change its name in the Irish language back to Fort of the Harlot. For centuries, the village in County Limerick, known as Doon in English, had been known in Gaelic as Dun Bleisce, or Fort of the Harlot, but the name was changed in 2003. Possibly due to bureaucratic sensitivities, Irish language Minister Eamon O Cuiv ordered the village's Gaelic name be changed to simply An Dun, or The Fort. The unpopular move resulted in about 1,000 locals signing a petition seeking to have `harlot' added back to the name. They were backed by local politicians and a Limerick County Council motion of support. O Cuiv asked the country's Placenames Commission, the official arbiter of Gaelic names, to "consider afresh" their advice.
■ TURKEY
Presidency sign up opens
Parliament yesterday began accepting candidacy applications for the country's next president, officially kicking off the electoral process for the vote next month. Tensions have been running high over the possibility that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will run for the post, a prospect that has sparked objections by secularists. An estimated 500,000 people from across Turkey gathered in a mass rally in Ankara on Saturday against any aspirations that Erdogan may have for the job. Presidential candidates have a 10-day period -- until midnight on April 25 -- during which to submit their applications. Erdogan has yet to say whether he will run for president. Parliament elects the president for a single seven-year term, and Erdogan's governing Justice and Development Party holds a majority of 353 of the single chamber's 550 seats.
■ ZIMBABWE
Doctors allege violence
An independent doctors organization said on Sunday that hundreds of Zimbabweans have been injured, maimed or traumatized in a surge of political violence in the past month by security authorities. Those injured since police violently crushed a prayer vigil in Harare on March 11 include political activists, six of who suffered gunshot wounds, including one activist shot dead, the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said. At least 49 pro-democracy leaders, including Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, needed hospitalization for serious injuries, it said. The doctors group, whose members include health services staff and most of the nation's independent physicians and who have treated victims of assault, publicized an international petition on Sunday calling for an end to state orchestrated violence and torture.
■ EGYPT
Writer in court over poem
A senior Islamic cleric is taking a writer and a culture magazine editor to court for offending Islam after the publication of a poem comparing God to a "traffic policeman," a judicial source said on Sunday. Sheikh Yussef al-Badri, of the government Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, together with 18 other plaintiffs, is suing poet Helmy Salem and Ahmed Higazi, the editor-in-chief of the culture publication Al-Ibdaa, for "blasphemy" and "offending the divine being." The plaintiffs complained of the "insolence of the writer to portray God as a traffic policeman."
■ UNITED STATES
Fish going deaf
An increase in manmade sounds underwater makes fish deaf, a professor says. Michael Smith, an assistant biology professor at Western Kentucky University, cited US Navy sonar and oceanic shipping as possible noise pollution for fish, which use sound to find their way around and listen for predators. His study will expose locally bought rainbow trout, silver perch and goldfish to various sound combinations at a special sound booth. Then tests will see whether the fish have hearing loss. The fish's brain waves will be recorded through electrodes while the fish listen to tones.
■ BELGIUM
Ticket collectors on strike
The rail network was paralyzed yesterday as ticket collectors went on strike in protest against a series of attacks on staff by passengers. Trains to other countries, including Luxembourg, were also hit, although the cross-channel Eurostar and the high-speed Thalys that runs to France, Germany and the Netherlands were operating as normal. "The strike is expected to last all day. There are many lines affected and we have had to cancel lots of trains," said Clarisse Poncelet, a spokeswoman for network operator Infrabel. She did not say exactly when trains would start running again.
■ UNITED STATES
Woman has lucky escape
Friday the 13th turned out to be lucky for one La Crosse, Wisconsin, woman. Sara Wrobel narrowly missed a 15 tonne to 20 tonne piece of construction equipment that became unhinged from a dump truck and fell just in front of her as she backed out of her driveway. She said she walked out of her house a few minutes early on Friday and pulled out of her driveway, and as she waited for her garage door to close the equipment -- a rock screener -- fell. "I heard this weird noise, and the thing crashed right in front of me," said Wrobel, who is pregnant and due any day. The screen became unhinged from the dump truck, hit a telephone pole, flipped over the embankment and landed on the driveway, she said.
■ UNITED STATES
Mosquito `threat' rejected
Three prisoners in Colorado say their lives have been threatened -- by mosquitoes. The inmates at Walsenburg and Limon prisons sued, saying they were at risk of contacting West Nile virus or other diseases after they were bitten repeatedly by mosquitoes and suffered "the emotional and mental distress of whether or not each mosquito's bite would result in death or serious bodily injury." Stephen Glover, Alan Smith and Michael Freeman said the bites caused high fever, headache, neck stiffness and muscle weakness. But the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision to throw out their case. Prison officials said no confirmed cases of West Nile virus have ever been found in the prison population, and inmates are given mosquito repellant.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese