■ CHINA
Yang Jianli back in US
A Boston-based Chinese democracy campaigner has returned home after serving five years in a Chinese prison for stealing into the country and spying for Taiwan, a Web site and his brother said yesterday. Yang Jianli (楊建利), a permanent US resident with doctorates from Harvard and Berkeley universities was released from prison in April, but Chinese authorities refused to issue him a passport, grant him residency status or allow his Chinese-American wife to visit him in Beijing. The 44-year-old Yang flew from Beijing to San Francisco en route to Boston last Saturday accompanied by a diplomat from the US embassy in Beijing, his brother said. Yang stole into China in 2002 on a friend's Chinese passport.
■ PHILIPPINES
Earthquake hits Mindanao
A strong 6.5-magnitude earthquake hit the southern Philippines yesterday, the US Geological Survey said. The quake's epicenter was reported to be 209km southeast of the town of Mati on Mindanao Island. Mylene Carols of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the quake was felt along the east coast of the island, but there were no reports of damage or injuries. "The quake's epicenter was out at sea and not on land," she said. "From our initial reports it was about 10km below the surface," she said, adding that no tsunami warning haD been issued. "There is only a small chance of a tsunami because we use magnitude seven and below as our cutoff point," the institute's Angelito Lunuza said. "Although we have not issued a tsunami warning, we have asked all our stations along the east coast to monitor any changes in sea levels just in case," he said.
■ PAKISTAN
Suicide bomber kills three
A suicide bomber killed three paramilitary soldiers and wounded 18 yesterday in the latest incident in a wave of violence in the northwest of the country, police said. "A bomber rammed an explosive-laden car into a Frontier Corps checkpost and killed three soldiers," said Mahmood Alam, a police officer in Thal town, 300km west of Islamabad, in North West Frontier Province, referring to a paramilitary force.
■ AUSTRALIA
US sailor pleads guilty
A US sailor pleaded guilty yesterday to soliciting an Australian child for sex over the Internet in a police sting operation. David Wayne Budd, 28, was arrested at Sydney's airport in June after he held an online conversation with a police detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. The sailor, who lives with his wife and child in San Diego, California, had flown 1,200km south from Queensland state, where he was participating in joint US-Australian military exercises, to meet his fictitious victim. Appearing before the Parramatta Local Court yesterday, Budd pleaded guilty to using the Internet to groom a child for sex. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison.
■ CHINA
Workers' Mandarin woes
About 70 percent of the country's estimated 200 million migrant workers have difficulty speaking Mandarin, though most are required to use it in their jobs, state media reported yesterday. Most prefer to speak in one of the country's numerous local dialects, and about 70 percent of them found it hard to speak Mandarin, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a Ministry of Education report on the country's language situation last year. Less than 3 percent of the workers had access to language training, though 80 percent were required to speak Mandarin by their employers, Xinhua said.
■ INDIA
Bollywood star released
The Supreme Court released Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt on bail yesterday, citing a technicality weeks after he was convicted for illegally possessing guns tied to the 1993 Mumbai bombings, news reports said. Dutt received bail because the Mumbai court that convicted him had not yet provided him with a copy of his sentence, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported. Five other people convicted in the same case were also granted bail on the same technicality. All will have to return to prison once they are given copies of the sentence, PTI said. Dutt was convicted last November and sentenced on July 31 to six years in prison for illegally possessing three automatic rifles and a pistol.
■ CHINA
Factory accident kills 14
At least 14 people died and 59 injured when a container spilled molten aluminum with a temperature of 900oC at a factory, state media reported yesterday. Xinhua news agency said the accident on Sunday night at a plant affiliated to the Weiqiao Pioneering Group Co in Zouping County, Shandong Province, cracked walls, smashed windows and caused the roof of the factory to blow right off. The 59 injured workers were hospitalized, but Xinhua did not say how serious their injuries were. It was not immediately clear exactly how the 14 died. Industrial accidents are common in China, where safety measures have not always kept pace with rapid economic development. Industrial accidents killed more than 127,000 people in China in 2005.
■ FINLAND
Ancient chewing gum found
A 5,000-year-old piece of chewing gum -- one of the oldest ever to be discovered -- has been found by a British archaeology student. The discovery of the Neolithic gum, made from birch bark tar, was made by Sarah Pickin, 23, during a dig. The gum had tooth prints in it. Trevor Brown, her tutor at the University of Derby, said: "Birch bark tar contains phenols, which are antiseptic compounds. It is generally believed that Neolithic people found that by chewing this stuff if they had gum infections it helped to treat the condition." He said it was particularly significant because of the well defined tooth prints. Pickin said she was delighted to find the gum and was excited to learn more about its history.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Spain accused of torture
The family and legal team of a British resident jailed in Spain as a terror suspect claim that he is the victim of the Spanish equivalent of Guantanamo Bay. Mohammed Fahsi has been detained for more than 18 months after being arrested by Spanish police who claimed to have struck a blow against a recruiting network that was sending suicide bombers to Iraq. Fahsi, 40, was granted residency in Britain two years ago after marrying a Nottingham primary school teacher, Khadija Podd. They have three children. She said: "They detained him and the other members of the legal mosque association which worked in tandem with the town council, near Barcelona," said Podd who has been married to Fahsi for 10 years.
■ UGANDA
Citizens asked for advice
The government plans to ask citizens countrywide to recommend measures to take against rebels and others responsible for the killings and brutality during the 20-year insurgency in the north of the country, the internal affairs minister said on Sunday. Government negotiators and those from the rebel Lord's Resistance Army group have taken a break from peace talks in Juba, the regional capital of southern Sudan, to consult their respective sides on the next item on the agenda: how to reconcile the people of the northern part of the country, and how to punish those responsible for atrocities. The talks have been delayed to allow consultations to continue.
■ ISRAEL
Holocaust grants decided
The government and Holocaust survivors have struck a deal on a special allowance for Israelis who lived through the Nazi genocide. The agreement reached on Sunday followed weeks of criticism that the government had abandoned the 240,000 survivors who live in Israel. The deal will guarantee Israelis who survived the Nazi ghettos and concentration camps a monthly stipend of 1,200 shekels (US$284), according to a statement from the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In addition, survivors will receive tax discounts and other benefits calculated according to their income, the statement said.
■ TURKEY
Gul fails in presidency vote
The country's new parliament, divided along party lines, could not elect a president yesterday as frontrunner Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul failed to secure the two-thirds of votes needed in a first round of voting. Gul, a devout Muslim, is expected to emerge victorious in further voting next week, when a simple majority is all that is needed.
■ GERMANY
Eleven injured on film shoot
Eleven people were injured when they fell off the back of a truck during the shooting of Tom Cruise's latest film in Berlin, police said yesterday. In Valkyrie, Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenberg, who fronted the failed attempt by a group of largely military conspirators to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944. The 11 fell from the truck when a side panel burst open as it drove around a corner in central Berlin on Sunday evening, police said. One of them was seriously hurt and had to remain in hospital. Filming was halted after the accident.
■ UNITED STATES
Missing body recovered
The body of a man missing since an interstate bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been recovered, bringing the confirmed death toll to 12, authorities said. The Hennepin County medical examiner's office on Sunday identified the remains as Scott Sathers, 30. Sathers worked in enrollment services at Capella University and was on his way home from work on Aug. 1, using his usual route, when the Interstate 35W bridge crumpled amid evening rush hour traffic. Divers continued to search for the last person on the list of missing, Greg Jolstad, 45.
■ UNITED STATES
Memorial stones replaced
A set of 32 small stones that became a focal point for the grieving Virginia Tech campus following April's shooting spree that killed 32 people were replaced with much larger rocks in a solemn ceremony in Blacksburg, Virginia, on Sunday. The ceremony was on the eve of the start of classes for the fall semester yesterday. The new, 136kg stones engraved with each victim's name in front of an administration building will serve as an intermediate memorial remembering the largest shooting in modern US history while officials look for a permanent site elsewhere on the main campus.
■ TURKEY
Hijacker trained by al-Qaeda
One of two men who hijacked a plane heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus was trained in camps run by al-Qaeda militants and planned to flee to Afghanistan, Turkish media reports said yesterday. The hijackers surrendered and released their hostages after forcing the Atlas Jet plane to land in southern Turkey on Saturday with the threat of a "bomb" which turned out to be modelling clay with wires attached. Officials said the pair had demanded to be taken to Tehran.
■ IRAN
Chant claim controversy
A politician has provoked controversy by suggesting that the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the country's Islamic revolution, wanted to drop its signature chant, "Death to America." The claim is made by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in the newly-published latest volume of his memoirs, entitled Towards Destiny. Rafsanjani discloses that a decision was made during Iran's 1980 to 1988 war with Iraq, when he was speaker of the Iranian parliament and one of Khomeini's closest confidants. Recollecting a parliamentary session on July 4, 1984, he writes: "Mr Imam-Mousavi [a member of Parliament] came and proposed dropping the slogan `Death to America' and `Death to the Soviet Union.' I said we have decided in principle. The Imam [Khomeini] has agreed but we are waiting for a chance." The slogan was adopted during the 1979 to 1981 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema