■CHINA
Official denies persecution
Beijing denied on Tuesday it had persecuted the family of prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) after his wife and children fled to the US. “There’s no political persecution or limits on the freedom of the family,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) told reporters. Gao’s wife, Geng He (耿和), and their two children sneaked out of Beijing at the beginning of January to escape to the US, where they arrived last Wednesday, Radio Free Asia said. Geng said in a tearful interview that she had fled China after her 15-year-old daughter had tried to commit suicide several times as she was blocked from going to school. State security personnel took Gao from his home village in Shaanxi Province on Feb. 4 and has not been heard from since.
■PHILIPPINES
Hostages alive: Red Cross
Three Red Cross workers held hostage by Islamic militants are alive after deadly clashes with security forces trying to rescue them, the Philippine Red Cross said yesterday. However, the organization’s chairman, Senator Richard Gordon, lashed out at the military for what he said was an ill-conceived operation that had led to the deaths of three soldiers and two militants, without freeing the three hostages. Fierce fighting erupted on Monday and Tuesday on Joli island as security forces came up against members of Abu Sayyaf. Afterwards, the military said it found tents and other equipment belonging to the kidnapped International Committee of the Red Cross workers — Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba, Swiss national Andreas Notter and Italian Eugenio Vagni.
■AUSTRALIA
Containers hard to recover
The 31 containers lost overboard when the Pacific Adventurer was buffeted by a storm off the east coast a week ago would be hard to recover, an expert said yesterday. The Navy mine hunter HMAS Yarra was sent to look for the lost boxes of ammonium nitrate after an aerial survey failed to find them. Greg Boller from the ocean-monitoring firm Tide Tech said the containers could have traveled 700km from the scene of the accident and be nearer Sydney than Brisbane. Aside from losing half its cargo of containers, the Hong Kong-owned ship spilled oil over 60km of beaches.
■INDONESIA
Cleric nabbed over wedding
Police arrested a Muslim cleric in Central Java province for marrying a 12-year-old girl in violation of the country’s child-protection law, an officer said yesterday. Pujiono Cahyo Widianto, 43, revealed in August that he had taken a 12-year-old girl as a second wife in a traditional Islamic wedding ceremony, sparking criticism from child-protection groups. Police in Semarang, the capital of Central Java, said they had charged Pujiono with sexual exploitation of a child.
■CHINA
‘Slumdog’ coming soon
Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire has secured a coveted slot as one of 20 major foreign movies that China will import this year, a distributor said yesterday. Many Hollywood movies miss out on the booming Chinese cinema market because of the annual quota, and others are weeded out by the censorship process. Chinese censors are wary of unflattering portrayals of the country and its people, explicit sex and violence and sensitive topics like Tibet. But Slumdog Millionaire cleared Chinese censors easily, said Zhang Hongyan, a publicist for the distributor, Hong Kong-based Edko Film.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Village up for sale
The village of Linkenholt, Hampshire, complete with 22 houses and cottages, two blacksmiths and a cricket pitch, went on sale yesterday. The charitable trust that owns the village has decided to sell up and use the capital it raises elsewhere. The asking price will be between £22 million and £25 million (US$31 million and US$35 million), said Jackson-Stops & Staff estate agents who are handling the sale. The village boasts a manor house, old rectory and clock tower and is part of a 2,000-acre estate. Locals, who rent their properties, are expected to stay on after the sale, and most hope that a change in ownership does not mean a change in lifestyle.
■DENMARK
Gay couples can adopt
Lawmakers have approved a law granting gay couples equal rights in adoption, by a vote of 62-53 with 64 absentees. The country is now in line with other EU countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden, allowing same-sex couples equal rights in adoption. The law had been sponsored by an openly gay lawmaker.
■YEMEN
S Koreans targeted again
A suicide bomber attacked a South Korean delegation yesterday after a weekend attack that killed four of their compatriots, but there were no casualties, officials said. The bomber blew up his explosives belt as the delegation was driving to the airport in Sanaa, shattering the car windows. “Vehicles carrying our government officials and bereaved family members came under a terrorist attack today. Nobody was harmed,” a foreign ministry official in Seoul said. Four South Koreans and their local guide were killed on Sunday while watching the sunset over the historic mud-brick city of Shibam. The government has blamed the local branch of al-Qaeda for that attack.
■SENEGAL
Africa needs dog controls
More stray dogs should be vaccinated or culled in Africa, where almost half the world’s annual human rabies deaths occur, experts said on Tuesday. Africa is the second most infected continent after Asia, with 25,000 rabies deaths a year out of the 55,000 cases registered worldwide. “We must vaccinate dogs or decrease the number of stray dogs by extermination, as is being done in some countries,” Aberrezak Soufi, a doctor at the Pasteur Institute in Algiers, told a conference in Dakar. The WHO said earlier this week that the simplest and most cost-effective way of combating rabies, which kills one person every 10 minutes, was immunizing dogs rather than making more vaccines to treat people who become infected. Doctors said many African countries do not sufficiently address rabies because the disease does not threaten their agricultural economies.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Bottle-thrower pleads guilty
A 19-year-old man who killed a woman when he threw a bottle into a crowded pub from which he had been barred last December, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to manslaughter. Emma O’Kane, a 27-year-old mother of three, died after a shard of glass flew into her neck when the bottle shattered, Manchester Crown Court heard. O’Kane, a part-time barmaid in Heywood, bled to death as the cut severed her jugular vein. Neil McNulty had been out enjoying birthday drinks but became abusive when he and his friends were not allowed into the pub. McNulty, who had known O’Kane and her family since he was a child, turned himself in the following day and was said to be “devastated” at her death.
■BRAZIL
Ecuador wiped off the map
Where’s Ecuador? Better not ask. A new geography text book for sixth-grade students doesn’t include the country on the map. The book distributed by Sao Paulo’s education department botches the location of most of Brazil’s neighbors. Paraguay is switched with Uruguay and a second “new” Paraguay is shown with a coastline at the southern tip of Brazil. Bolivia is fortunate enough to appear on the map, but the book misses its border with Paraguay — the Paraguay that sits where Uruguay should be, that is. About 500,000 of the books containing errors were distributed and will be replaced with corrected maps, to be paid for by the Vanzolini Foundation, which published the books, the Sao Paulo department said.
■UNITED STATES
Former guerrilla released
A former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an urban guerrilla notorious for the 1974 kidnapping of media heiress Patty Hearst, was released on Tuesday after serving seven years in prison, officials said. Sara Jane Olson, 62, was released from California’s Chowchilla prison to serve parole in Minnesota. She was arrested in 1999 for killing Myrna Opsahl inside the lobby of a California bank in 1975 and for trying to bomb police cars in Los Angeles. The Symbionese Liberation Army was a self-styled revolutionary army that committed bank robberies, murders and other acts of violence. Its members kidnapped 19-year-old Hearst to try to gain the release of two of members who had been tried and convicted a month earlier.
■MEXICO
City may ban plastic bags
Mexico City legislators have approved a bill that would hit store owners or operators with one-and-a-half days in jail and fines of about US$77,400 for giving customers plastic bags for their purchases. The bill would exempt biodegradable plastic bags. The bill must be signed into law by the mayor. The law would give businesses one year to adopt appropriate bags. In a press statement on Tuesday, the city legislature cited estimates that the average resident uses 288 plastic bags per year.
■UNITED STATES
PRC legislator open on lama
An ethnic Tibetan legislator in China on Tuesday indicated openness about the 23-year-old Karmapa Lama, who has been billed as a potential bridge between Beijing and Tibetans in exile. China has sent a delegation of Beijing-appointed Tibetans for talks in Washington. Delegation head Shingtsa Tenzinchodrak repeated China’s denunciations of the Dalai Lama, but declined judgment on the Karmapa Lama, often considered the third highest-ranking lama. “I feel it is still too early to judge him,” Tenzinchodrak, vice chairman of the Tibetan legislature’s standing committee, told a news conference at the Chinese embassy.
■CUBA
Wives appeal for dissidents
Mothers and wives of dissidents imprisoned since a March 2003 crackdown demanded their release on Tuesday, saying their loved ones were guilty only of loving their country. The demand, in a letter from the group known as “Ladies in White” to President Raul Castro and former leader Fidel Castro, was issued a day before the sixth anniversary of the arrests of 75 activists and independent journalists in what has come to be known as the “black spring.” Of the 75, 54 remain behind bars.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of