■ CHINA
Students burned by balloons
More than 60 students at a school in the northwest suffered burn injuries when hundreds of small hydrogen balloons exploded, state media reported yesterday. The students, from Lanzhou Electric Power School in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, were taking part in a sports event when the accident happened on Sunday, the Xinhua news agency said. As more than 1,500 balloons meant to be used at the opening of the event caught fire, dozens of students suffered burns, some of them severe, to their faces, hands and backs, according to the agency.
■ NEPAL
Political crisis talks held
Political leaders held emergency talks yesterday with former rebel Maoists to try to persuade the ultra-leftists to remain in government and cancel protests planned for later this week. The Maoists have vowed to stage major demonstrations and quit the government if the country is not immediately declared a republic, a move that would deal a major blow to last year's landmark peace deal that ended a decade of civil war. Maoist leader Prachanda was "scheduled to meet the prime minister on Monday afternoon, and other leaders have been meeting leaders from the other parties," Maoist deputy commander Ananta said.
■ CHINA
Church leader released
Beijing has released a leader of the nation's underground Protestant Church after being detained for three years for illegal possession of thousands of Bibles, a Christian activist group said yesterday. Cai Zhuohua (蔡卓華) from Beijing was freed on Sept, 10, according to a statement from the US-based China Aid Association, having lost more than 20kg but in otherwise good health. Cai, who was first taken into custody on Sept. 11, 2004, and formally sentenced to jail a year later, was forced to work 12 hours a day making soccer balls for the 2008 Beijing Olympics while in custody, the group said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Navy pays for implants
The military on Sunday defended its decision to pay for some female sailors to have breast implants, saying the operations were not carried out for cosmetic reasons. Defense Force spokesman Brigadier Andrew Nikolic did not say how many women had had the taxpayer-funded operation. But he said the military would consider paying for plastic surgery for personnel where there were medical, dental or compelling psychological or psychiatric reasons. Any suggestion that breast operations were carried out to make the women "look sexy" were not only wrong, but insulting, Nikolic said. "Under defense policy we do consider the holistic needs of our people, both physical and psychological," he said.
■ AUSTRALIA
Suspect thought to be in US
A man who abandoned a girl, thought to be his daughter, at a busy train station is believed to have fled to the US, police said yesterday. The well-dressed Asian child, who is aged about three, was found wandering the Melbourne city station on Saturday morning. Security footage showed her holding the hand of an Asian man wearing a suit and carrying a suitcase just 15 minutes before she was found at Southern Cross station. Police said they believed the man was the child's father and that the pair had come to Australia from Auckland days earlier.
■ AUSTRALIA
Howard would lose seat: poll
Prime Minister John Howard would lose the election in his home district of Sydney if parliamentary polls were held now, a poll said yesterday. The results of the Morgan poll published in Melbourne's Age newspaper heighten the pressure on the country's second-longest serving prime minister to relinquish power before elections expected by early December. Howard reiterated on Sunday that he would lead his center-right coalition to the election despite opinion polls throughout the year showing his government trailing the center-left Labor Party, which has been in opposition since 1996.
■ UNITED STATES
Centenarian rides in sidecar
Evelyn Warburton rode to her 100th birthday party on Saturday in a motorcycle sidecar. She sported a black leather jacket, a helmet and a pair of sunglasses for the 10-minute ride from her home in Lightstreet, Pennsylvania, to her granddaughter's house in Berwick. "It was fun today," Warburton said. Her chauffeur on the green 2000 Harley-Davidson Ultra was George Crawford, a friend who had been offering to take her to church on his motorcycle for several years. Warburton finally accepted Crawford's offer of a ride to her party. She had actually turned 100 on Thursday.
■ UNITED STATES
Bathroom draws tourists
When tourists ask for the bathroom in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, airport lately, it is usually not because they have to go. It is because they want to see the stall made famous by US Senator Larry Craig's arrest in a sex sting. "It's become a tourist attraction," said Karen Evans, information specialist at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. "People are taking pictures." Craig was arrested June 11 by a Minneapolis airport police officer. The Idaho Republican pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Just 15 minutes into her shift on Friday, Evans said she had been asked directions to the new tourist attraction four times.
■ UNITED STATES
Student defender arrested
A student government president in Pennsylvania was charged with drunken driving just weeks after saying the media had unfairly portrayed students as irresponsible. Christopher Bevan, 21, was pulled over last weekend after a campus police officer said he saw the Bloomsburg University student driving more than 80kph in a 24kph zone. A breath test showed Bevan's blood-alcohol level was .147 percent, authorities said, well over the legal limit. Bevan recently wrote a letter to the Press Enterprise of Bloomsburg about media coverage of the college's annual Block Party, an event critics have described as rowdy and alcohol-fueled. The stories have "painted BU students with a broad and negative brush and are both inaccurate and extremely unfair," Bevan wrote.
■ ZAMBIA
Resurrection investigated
Police on Sunday ordered a forensic probe into a bizarre report that a woman believed to have died and been buried 11 years ago has reappeared in the capital Lusaka. Police Chief Emphraim Mateyo said that he has ordered the exhumation of Grace following claims by her parents and relatives to the police that she had resurrected. "We want to establish the truth. We shall exhume the body ... and carry out tests," Mateyo said. The police boss said the story grew more complicated because two couples were also claiming to be Grace's parents.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
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