■ MYANMAR
Gambari expresses worry
UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari said yesterday that recent reports of arrested dissidents were "extremely disturbing" and called on the junta to halt its crackdown immediately. "It runs counter to the spirit of mutual engagement between the UN and Myanmar," Gambari said after meeting the Thai foreign minister at the start of a six-nation tour to seek Asia's help in resolving the crisis. Rights groups have said that four of the country's most prominent political activists were arrested over the weekend. Gambari said the reports were "extremely disturbing and these actions must stop at once."
■ CHINA
Miners' bodies recovered
The bodies of 16 workers buried alive after an explosion in a mine have been found, state media reported yesterday. Rescue workers were still searching for three more miners trapped after Saturday's explosion in Jiangxi Province, but there was little hope they were alive, Xinhua news agency reported. The blast in the Jianxin mine, which has a history of problems due to high concentrations of gas, happened while 283 miners were working in the pit, it said. A November 2003 explosion at the mine killed 49, while in August last year five workers died in another blast.
■ CHINA
Mother kills children
A woman apparently threw her children -- who were tied up -- from the 24th floor of a Hong Kong apartment building before jumping to her own death, police and media reports said yesterday. The 12-year-old girl was found dead on Sunday with her hands and legs tied together, while her nine-year-old brother also had his hands bound, police said in a statement. The woman, whose husband is terminally ill with cancer, then threw herself off the building, reports said. Police were treating the deaths as murder and suicide. The family lived in Tin Shui Wai, dubbed the "city of sadness" for its high levels of domestic violence and poverty.
■ NORTH KOREA
Tourists fall off bridge
Twenty South Korean tourists were injured yesterday when they fell off an iron suspension bridge at North Korea's Mount Kumgang tourist resort, officials said. Six were seriously injured, South Korean tour operator Hyundai Asan said, adding the accident took place near a waterfall at the scenic mountain resort on the east coast. "The 20m-long bridge tilted due to a loose fastening bolt, sending 20 tourists falling about 7m," a Hyundai Asan spokesman said. "Fourteen people received treatment at a hospital in the resort, while six others were being transported across the border to a South Korean hospital," he said.
■ PAKISTAN
Family feud leaves 16 dead
A bereaved father led an armed group that opened fire on his daughter's in-laws, killing 16 people including three children, police said on Sunday. The father and his associates attacked the in-laws as they gathered on Saturday at their home south of Multan city to break their fast for the holy month of Ramadan, police said. The shootings were an apparent revenge attack for the deaths of four members of the father's own family including his daughter last year, local police official Sheikh Abid Akhtar said. Police later surrounded the gunmen in a sugarcane field, where a standoff was ongoing. "No one has been arrested so far," Akhtar said.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Editor fears arrest
The Johannesburg Sunday Times said on Sunday that it expected its editor and a journalist on its staff to be arrested this week after reporting allegations that the health minister was a drunk and a thief. The newspaper said its editor, Mondli Makhanya, and reporter, Jocelyn Maker, would be "hauled off to Cape Town in connection with charges of theft and for contravention of Section 17 of the National Health Act." The statute makes it an offense to gain access to a person's confidential medical records. The paper claimed in August that during a two-day stay in a medical clinic for shoulder operations, Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang "threw drunken tantrums, abused nurses and washed down medication with wine and whiskey." The minister has so far failed to deny the allegations.
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