CHINA
Flood-trapped miners freed
Two miners were rescued early yesterday after spending 10 days trapped underground by a flood, state news services reported, in a rare success for the accident-prone industry. A total of 42 workers were underground when water began pouring into the state-owned Zhengsheng coal mine on Sept. 28 and although 30 escaped, a dozen were stuck inside, Xinhua news agency said. Rescue efforts in Fenyang, Shanxi Province, have been continuing ever since, Xinhua added, citing the mining company’s rescue headquarters. The two miners were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening problems and searchers were still trying to reach the remaining 10. The pair’s fate stands in stark contrast to that of hundreds of miners every year. Last year, 1,384 people were killed in coal mining accidents, according to official figures.
CHINA
Official fired for wedding
The country’s anti-graft watchdog has fired a village official who spent more than 1.6 million yuan (US$260,000) on a lavish three-day wedding for his son, state media said, the latest step in the government’s crackdown on waste and extravagance. Ma Linxiang (馬林祥), a deputy village head from the Beijing suburb of Qingheying, hosted the estimated 250-table wedding at an upmarket convention center during the week-long National Day holiday last week, newspapers reported. Ma told the Beijing News that the wedding was hosted by both families and that he “couldn’t stop” the bride’s family from splurging on the venue, as well as a troupe of performers that included two celebrities. Ma said he only paid for the two days of festivities in his village that cost 200,000 yuan and that he received a fraction of that back in gifts, the newspaper said. Ma also said luxury cars used at the wedding were only “borrowed.”
MYANMAR
Pardon given to 56 prisoners
The government released 56 political prisoners, including some former ethnic minority separatists, in a presidential amnesty yesterday, according to government and activist sources. The prisoners were freed from at least a dozen detention centers across the country, a senior Ministry of Home Affairs official, who declined to be identified, told reporters. Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner who now works for the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, a body that monitors prisoners of conscience held or political activists facing charges, said that former members of ethnic minority rebel groups were among those freed. The move came just ahead of the annual ASEAN forum in Brunei. In a speech made during a trip to Britain earlier this year, President Thein Sein promised to free all political detainees by the end of the year.
SOUTH KOREA
North threatens US over drill
Pyongyang yesterday warned Washington of a “horrible disaster” and put its troops on alert over a massive joint naval drill involving a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier, and South Korean and Japanese vessels scheduled for this week. The warning came after the government and Washington last week signed a new joint strategy to counter the growing threat from the North. Pyongyang said the situation on the Korean Peninsula was “getting strained again” and warned the US that the closer its forces came “the more unpredictable disasters their actions will cause... The US will be wholly accountable for the unexpected horrible disaster to be met by its imperialist aggression forces.”
UNITED STATES
Self-immolator identified
Police have identified the man who set himself on fire on the National Mall and later died of his injuries. Washington police spokesman Paul Metcalf said in a news release on Monday the man was 64-year-old John Constantino of Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Police said on Saturday that Constantino’s injuries were so severe that authorities needed to use DNA and dental records to identify him. The man poured the contents of a red canister of gasoline on himself in the center portion of the mall on Friday last week. He then set himself on fire, with passing joggers taking off their shirts to help put out the flames.
ITALY
Divers ‘unpack’ bodies
Deep sea divers “unpacked a wall of people” from the hull of a smuggler’s trawler on the sea floor near Lampedusa Island on Monday, gingerly untangling the dead would-be migrants in the latest and most painstaking phase of a recovery operation following the ship’s fiery capsizing. It was the first time the divers had been able to reach the hull and authorities said 38 more bodies were recovered, raising the death toll from the tragedy on Thursday last week to 232. Scores more are believed missing; most, if not all, were Eritreans trying to reach Europe in search of asylum and a better life.
UNITED STATES
Lost journalist survives
As her husband went for help, Cathy Frye lay on the ground of a remote Texas state park, hiding from the sun under a small tree. She was alone for two days until someone on high ground spotted her. Frye, an award-winning reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, remained in an El Paso hospital on Monday, one day after she was airlifted by helicopter to safety. Rescuers found Frye, the 43-year-old mother of two children, in a dry creek known as an arroyo. The partial federal government shutdown had forced Frye and her husband, Democrat-Gazette photographer Rick McFarland, out of their original destination, Big Bend National Park, but they took a local employee’s advice and went west to Big Bend Ranch State Park, which remained open. The couple headed toward a popular hiking trail, but overshot their mark and spent that night near a scenic overlook, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. They found the right trail the next day, but then lost it again. That night, the couple slept in wet clothes and with no material to start a fire. On Friday, Frye told her husband she could not go any further. They decided McFarland should carry on toward their truck to find help.
ARGENTINA
President in for surgery
Doctors prepared to drill into President Cristina Fernandez’s skull yesterday morning to siphon out blood that is pressuring her brain two months after she suffered an unexplained head injury. Experts described the procedure as generally low risk and almost always having positive results, but the surgery on the 60-year-old leader worried many Argentines, who have struggled to imagine their country with anyone else at its center. Fernandez was diagnosed with “chronic subdural hematoma,” or fluid trapped between the skull and brain. As people age, it can happen with a head injury so mild that they do not remember it. In the president’s case, doctors initially prescribed a month’s rest, but decided surgery was required after she complained of numbness and weakness in her upper left arm on Sunday.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not