■ CHINA
Bus crash kills seven
A bus carrying 30 construction workers slammed into a dirt mound on the roadside, killing seven people and injuring 23 others, state media said yesterday. Victims of Saturday's crash in Heyang County of Shaanxi Province were laborers from Xian city who had been working on a new rail line, the official Xinhua news agency said. Traffic accidents kill about 100,000 people in the country a year, or one person every five minutes.
■ INDONESIA
Muslims seek untied rule
Thousands of followers of a hard-line group seeking to unite the world's Muslims under a single government marched through the streets of Jakarta yesterday ahead of the Islamic holy month, Ramadan. Hizbut Tahrir, a Sunni organization with an estimated 1 million members, is banned in some Asian and Arab countries. But it drew 90,000 supporters from areas including Europe, Africa and the Middle East to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, for a massive meeting last month. The group, though radical, does not support violence to obtain its objective. "The holy month is the moment to remind us we can't implement Islam thoroughly under a democracy. It has to be under a caliphate," said Ummu Himmah, 34, as she prepared to join roughly 2,000 other people on the march through Jakarta.
■ JAPAN
Anxiety increasing, poll finds
More than two-thirds of Japanese are worried about their lives -- a record high, according to a news report yesterday. An annual Cabinet Office survey conducted from July 5 to July 22 found 69.5 percent of respondents were worried or felt uneasy about their everyday lives, the Kyodo News agency said. The figure was the highest on record for the survey, conducted annually since 1958, it said. Anxiety about life after retirement topped the list, followed by health concerns, the report said. Nearly three-quarters of all respondents said the government should reform the social security system.
■ MYANMAR
Junta pans US, UK
The military government yesterday accused the US and Britain of trying to topple them by backing a wave of rare anti-junta protests. The junta has faced three weeks of near-daily protests by pro-democracy supporters around the country, sparked by public anger over a massive hike in fuel prices last month. More than 150 people have been arrested following the rare protests, according to Amnesty International. The demonstrations still grew last week to include Buddhist monks who seized 20 government officials as hostages for several hours at a monastery in central Myanmar.
■ UNITED STATES
Identity thief sentenced
A court in Hawaii sentenced a Honolulu man to 30 years in prison for stealing the land and identity of a businessman found killed in the Philippines last year. Henry Ponce Jacinto Calucag Jr, 58, will serve back-to-back 20- and 10-year prison terms for stealing the title to John Elwin's Kauai property valued at US$265,000. He must serve six and a half years before becoming eligible for parole. While law enforcement officials have confirmed Calucag is a suspect in Elwin's murder, he has not been charged in the Kauai businessman's death. Elwin, a 51-year-old well-to-do investor and paint store owner, disappeared in May of last year while on a trip to the Philippines with Calucag.
■ TANZANIA
Bus crash kills 27
At least 27 people were killed in a bus accident on Saturday in the southwestern part of the country, a senior police officer said. A bus tried to overtake a car and crashed into a truck about 50km from the town of Mbeya, said Stephen Mwinamila, the regional traffic commander. Mwinamila said two pedestrians were among those killed. Forty-three people were seriously injured and have been admitted to Mbeya Hospital, he said. The accident was one of the deadliest in the region in the past two years.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Expedient trial concludes
A man was tried and convicted in less than 80 minutes in what is thought to be the fastest trial in English legal history, the Ministry of Justice said on Friday. Shaun Murray, 28, was found guilty of possessing criminal property at Carlisle Crown Court in northern England on Thursday. The whole process -- the jury being sworn in, prosecution and defense cases, judge's summing up, jurors' deliberations and verdict -- took just 1 hour and 19 minutes. Judge Paul Batty told the court the hearing was probably the shortest in the history of the city, if not the whole country.
■ ISRAEL
Neo-Nazis arrested
Police announced yesterday the arrest of a gang of alleged neo-Nazis -- all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union accused of attacking immigrant workers, drug addicts and religious Jews. The eight men arrested, aged 16 to 21 and including the suspected leader of the group, were due to appear in court in Ramle later the same day, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. "We want them to be charged with being involved in neo-Nazi activities," he said, adding that the arrests followed a year-long investigation. One of the members of the group has left the country and remains at large, he said.
■ PORTUGAL
McCanns head home
The parents of Madeleine McCann, the missing British toddler, left the villa where they have been staying in Praia da Luz yesterday for Faro airport to take a plane back to Britain. Gerry and Kate McCann had been thought to have put plans to go home to Britain on hold after being named as suspects by police on Friday. Their daughter Madeleine, who would now be aged four, disappeared from their holiday apartment in the resort on May 3 as her parents ate an evening meal with friends nearby. They have based themselves in the resort ever since, staging a high-profile campaign for information about what happened to her.
■ EUROPEAN UNION
`Quieter' symphonies ahead
Shhhh! Mute the brass and please -- go easy on the cymbals! A directive on noise abatement contains a provision that will limit the "noise" of symphony orchestras beginning early next year. While it is not meant to ban Beethoven's "ba-ba-ba-baah," some musicians are worried overzealous enforcement could take the "Joy" out of the German master's exuberant Ode to Joy. "It can't work in symphony orchestras," said Libor Pesek, conductor of the Prague Symphony. "How could you apply it to Gustav Mahler, for instance, or Richard Strauss?" Though musicians bristled at the claim, some evidence suggests the classics are just loud noise for the non-music lover.
■ UNITED STATES
Synagogue seats for sale
Just in time for the Jewish High Holidays, two lifetime front-row seats to services at the historic Temple Emanu-El synagogue in Miami Beach, Florida, are being auctioned off on eBay with a minimum opening bid of US$1.8 million. Besides getting to sit up front close to the rabbi, the winning bidder's family name will be engraved on Seats 1 and 2 of Row 1, Section DD, and they will receive free parking, two custom-made prayer shawls and yarmulkes, and a hefty tax write-off.
■ UNITED STATES
First lady undergoes surgery
First lady Laura Bush underwent surgery to relieve pain from pinched nerves in her neck. The White House said the procedure on Saturday was successful. The problem kept her from joining President George W. Bush on a trip to Australia this week for the annual meeting of the APEC forum in Sydney. Laura Bush underwent the procedure at The George Washington University Hospital. She returned to the White House on Saturday afternoon and was said to be resting comfortably.
■ UNITED STATES
Whale shot by machine gun
A California gray whale was killed after a group of people harpooned it and shot it with a machine gun, officials said. Coast Guard Petty Officer Kelly Parker said five people believed to be members of the Makah Tribe of Neah Bay, Washington State, shot and harpooned the whale on Saturday morning. Petty Officer Shawn Eggert said the whale disappeared beneath the surface in the evening and did not resurface. Tribe members were being held by the Coast Guard but had not been charged, said Mark Oswell, a spokesman for the law enforcement arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The tribe has subsistence fishing rights to kill whales, but it is possible that the whale was shot illegally.
■ UNITED STATES
Storm to clip North Carolina
Tropical Storm Gabrielle swirled toward North Carolina, but its promised rain and high winds were not enough to scare residents and vacationers away from the beach. "When people hear about tropical storms, they assume houses are going to fall in the ocean," said Margot Jolly, a lifeguard with Nags Heads Ocean Rescue. "They shouldn't overreact like that. Just relax, stay inside, and have a little hurricane party." Forecasters said the storm was likely to strengthen before clipping the state's Outer Banks, a chain of barrier islands popular with tourists, yesterday afternoon.
■ UNITED STATES
Rumpus over statue's arms
The swashbuckling sea captain who helped found America's first permanent English settlement lost his right arm in battle nearly two decades earlier -- but you would not know it to look at the two-armed statue on the campus of the Christopher Newport University in Virginia. Some annoyed and angry alumni and history buffs want the monument to get the hook that Christopher Newport is believed to have used 400 years ago. The pair of arms on the 7.3m bronze statue shows a lack of respect for history, said Andy Kiser of Winchester, a student of colonial Virginia history. That is especially galling, Kiser said, in a part of Virginia filled with historic attractions such as Colonial Williamsburg. "In the middle of a community that tries so hard to get it right, here's a 4 tonne `Oops, we got it wrong,'" he said.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
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