■ China
Dissident released from jail
High-profile Chinese dissident Yang Jianli (楊建利) was released from a Beijing jail yesterday after serving a five-year sentence for spying and illegally entering China, his lawyer said. "He got out today," lawyer Mo Shaoping (莫少平) said. "He is still being deprived of his political rights so he cannot speak with the press as he has no freedom to speak." Yang, a permanent US resident, was a former researcher at Harvard University and a prominent democracy activist in China's exiled dissident community. He left China after being involved in the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests and was subsequently banned from returning to the country. He re-entered China in 2002 with another person's passport in an effort to document labor rights abuses in the country.
■ Japan
Compensation ruling upheld
The country's top court upheld a ruling yesterday denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II, news reports said. The Supreme Court ruled that the women had no right to seek war compensation from Tokyo because of a 1972 agreement with China, Kyodo News agency and public broadcaster NHK reported.
■ Hong Kong
Jailed reporter hospitalized
A Singapore newspaper reporter jailed for spying two years ago has been hospitalized twice this year, with no word on whether he might be given medical parole, a newspaper reported on Friday. Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong (程翔) was sentenced last August to five years' imprisonment after being convicted of spying for Taiwan. One of Ching's brothers, Ching Hai (程曦) said the journalist had been hospitalized for one week for a "heart problem" then a second time for a duodenum ulcer, the Hong Kong Ming Pao newspaper reported. Reports have suggested he might be released on July 1st -- the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's transition from British to Chinese rule.
■ New Zealand
Not so happy meal
A grandmother was alarmed to find a condom in a happy meal gift pack bought for her seven-year-old granddaughter at a McDonald's restaurant, local media reported yesterday. The condom was discovered on Tuesday night in a bag that came with Maia Whitaker's meal, which her grandparents bought at a McDonald's outlet in the city of Wellington. Grandpa Rowan Hutch told the Dominion Post newspaper it was lucky his wife was first to look inside the small sports bag that came with the meal. She was aghast when she found the green condom and its packet inside the bag, he said. The outlet quickly swapped the happy meal for a hamburger and pencil case. McDonald's is investigating.
■ Russia
Cellist Rostropovich dies
Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, has died, his spokeswoman said. He was 80. Rostropovich, who lived in self-imposed exile in Paris, suffered from intestinal cancer. His criticism of the leaders of his homeland started in the Stalin era. In the early 1970s Rostropovich sheltered dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their country house. He appeared frail at his 80th birthday party last month at the Kremlin, and the ITAR-Tass news agency said he was hospitalized again several days ago.
■ Italy
Nuns get Internet habit
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