■China
Miners die in blast
A gas explosion in a Chinese coal mine has killed at least 26 miners and left two missing in the second such disaster this week in the same northern province, the official Xinhua News Agency said yesterday. The explosion Wednesday in the mine in Yangquan, a city in Shanxi Province occurred as workers were trying to pump out the gas, according to earlier reports.
■ Pakistan
Ports fear possible oil spill
Pakistani port officials warned Thursday that they faced a major oil spill along the country's southern coastline after a tanker that ran aground in heavy storms began to crack open. A growing slick of oil washed ashore along the main beaches outside Karachi bringing toxic fumes and hundreds of dead fish, sea birds and turtles. More than 1,000 policemen, equipped with masks, were deployed to close the seashore. Around 15km of beach, which every evening is normally filled with families from Karachi, has been closed.
■ Solomon Islands
Militia says guns are passe
One of the two warring ethnic militias in the Solomon Islands staged a major ceremonial surrender of arms on Friday, handing over 90 weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, saying the time for guns was over. "I would like to apologize to our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and all our relatives for all the cruel things we have done in the past several years," said Malcolm Lake, a former member of the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF). "Time for gun is past," said Lake during the ceremony by 70 former MEF members in Auki, the provincial capital on the island of Malaita.
■ Australia
Biotechnology advances
Scientists are getting so good at growing human tissue that within five years women might be re-growing a breast lost to cancer or even cultivating their own implants inside another organ, a gathering of plastic surgeons in Australia was told yesterday. Within a decade it might also be possible for complete organs to be grown and for some transplants to become a thing of the past, delegates were told at a meeting in Sydney of the International Confederation of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. Researchers at Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital began with experiments on mice and then moved from growing small amounts of tissue to cultivating large organs with a specific shape.
■ South Korea
Ex-president's aide arrested
Prosecutors yesterday arrested one of former president Kim Dae-jung's closest aides on charges of taking 20 billion won (US$16.8 million) in bribes from a business group. Kwon Roh-kap is accused of receiving money from Hyundai shortly before parliamentary elections in April 2000. Hyundai executive Chung Mong-hun, who committed suicide last week, had allegedly tried to win political support for his business in North Korea. Prosecution investigators whisked Kwon to a state penitentiary just outside Seoul soon after the Seoul District Court issued an arrest warrant. Kwon denied taking money from Chung, who took his own life after questioning by prosecutors about illegal payoffs to politicians. He was also in serious financial trouble.
■Greece
Temblor rocks islands
A powerful earthquake struck islands in western Greece on Thursday, leaving more than 50 people injured and turning a peak summer holiday weekend into a frightened exodus as tourists streamed toward the mainland. The 6.4-magnitude quake struck at 8:15am, with its epicenter deep in the seabed near the Ionian Sea island of Lefkada, 290km northwest of Athens, the Athens Geodynamic Institute said. At least two strong aftershocks followed with preliminary magnitudes of 5.3, the institute said. The only bridge linking Lefkada with the western mainland was jammed with cars carrying tourists.
■ United States
Arnie beefs up his bid
Actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday further beefed up his bid to become governor of California by adding former US statesman George Shultz to his campaign team. The move came a day after billionaire businessman Warren Buffett joined the Terminator star's lineup as his chief economic and financial adviser ahead of an Oct. 7 vote on Governor Gray Davis' fate. Shultz, a former US secretary of state under Republican president Ronald Reagan, will join investment wizard Buffett in crafting an economic strategy for the actor.
■ United Kingdom
Theory: Rats spread SARS
Black rats of the type that spread bubonic plague could have triggered one of the biggest outbreaks of the SARS epidemic, according to an article in Britain's Lancet published yesterday. The source of the outbreak has been traced to a single man with kidney disease who briefly visited his brother at the Amoy Gardens estate twice in March. Public health expert Dr Stephen Ng, from Columbia University School of Public Health in New York, suggested in the journal that a rat entering the apartment used by the infected visitor initially picked up the virus from contaminated material such as left-over food, passing it to other rats and thence to other residents.
■ Germany
Neo-Nazis may parade
Germany's constitutional court gave clearance on Thursday for neo-Nazis to parade near the tomb of Rudolf Hess, the onetime deputy to Adolf Hitler, ruling that freedom of assembly prevails over local officials' revulsion at fascism. Hess, who committed suicide at the age of 93 in the Allies' Spandau jail in Berlin, is revered as a martyr by neo-Nazis. Last year, nearly 2,500 showed up in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel to mark the anniversary of his death on August 17, 1987. Civic officials banned this year's demonstration, on the grounds that it could turn into a riot.
■ United Kingdom
Really Great Britons
The pioneering mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton has been named the greatest Briton of all time by overseas voters in a poll conducted by the BBC World satellite news network. Newton (1642-1727), who formulated the theory of gravity and is considered to have laid many of the foundations of modern science, grabbed more than 21 percent of the vote. In second position came Britain's World War II leader, Sir Winston Churchill, with 17 percent of the vote, followed by the late Princess Diana with 13 percent.
Agencies
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