■ CHINA
Coal mine fire traps 15
A fire at a coal mine has trapped 15 workers and has been burning since Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency said. Rescuers at the Shanxi Province mine have found three bodies, though 18 people managed to escape, the report yesterday said. "It is not clear whether the 15 trapped miners are still alive or not, and the fire is yet to be quenched," it quoted Wang Xingui, deputy head of the rescue team, as saying. The country's coal industry is the deadliest in the world, with 2,163 miners killed in 1,320 accidents in the first seven months of this year.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Roh mulls walk over border
President Roh Moo-Hyun is considering "walking across" the heavily-fortified border to North Korea for a summit early next month, a report said yesterday. Chosun Ilbo, the largest circulation daily said. However, the idea had sparked concerns about the safety of the head of state. Roh is to visit the North by car via the truce border village of Panmunjeon from Oct. 2 to Oct. 4 for peace talks with the North's leader Kim Jong-il -- only the second inter-Korean summit in the six decades since the peninsula was divided. Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, traveled to the North by air for the first-ever peace summit with Kim in 2000. "Using an overland route for this summit unlike the first one, we're considering showing the president walking across the border line, the symbol of the divided Korea," an unnamed government official told Chosun. The idea, if realized, would allow Roh to drop off his car near the inter-Korean military demarcation line and walk across with his staff, the paper said.
■ INDIA
Man murdered priest
A Hindu man serving a life sentence for burning alive an Australian Christian missionary and his two sons was given another jail term on Saturday for murdering a Catholic priest. Dara Singh is serving a life term in Orissa state for the January 1999 killings of Graham Staines and his two sons, aged eight and 10. On Saturday, a court handed Singh and three others life terms for battering to death 35-year-old Arul Doss, a priest, in September 1999, a court official said. Seventeen others suspected of involvement in the hate crime were set free for lack of evidence, the official said.
■ MALAYSIA
Fees proposed for drivers
Authorities in the nation's biggest city plan to impose a fee on motorists as part of efforts to reduce traffic congestion in downtown areas, a report said yesterday. Two million vehicles ply Kuala Lumpur's streets daily and the city has recorded traffic growth of 10 percent to 15 percent each year, Mayor Abdul Hakim Borhan was quoted by national news agency Bernama as saying on a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. Under the system, vehicles will have their license plates recorded when they enter certain streets, and owners will be required to pay the fee at a bank or convenience store. Drivers who don't pay will be fined, the report said.
■ CHINA
Checks of US hides intensify
Inspectors in the northeast have stepped up checks on cattle hides imported from the US after finding live flies in six shipments, state media said yesterday. The move appeared to be part of Beijing's efforts to show that products from other countries also have quality problems after facing months of international scrutiny about the standards of its own exports. Inspectors in the port city of Dalian found cheese flies in containers of cattle hides between July 30 and Sept. 6, the Xinhua news agency said, citing local officials. No other details were given about the shipments. Cheese fly larva are usually found in moldy cheese or putrid meat. If ingested by humans, they can live for a period in the intestines and can cause diarrhea and vomiting.
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