■ China
Juvenile delinquency grows
The number of juvenile delinquents is rising fast in China and young criminals now account for nearly one-tenth of all arrests, state media said yesterday. China arrested 69,780 suspected criminals aged 18 and under last year, an increase of 12.7 percent from the year before, the Xinhua news agency reported on its Web site, citing data from the state prosecutor's office. They accounted for 9.1 percent of all criminal suspects put in detention, compared with 7.3 percent on average over the five previous years, according to the agency. Xinhua did not speculate on a reason for the increase but said society, families and schools share a responsibility to ensure a healthy environment for young people.
■ Japan
LDP gaining support
Public support for Japan's ruling party has rebounded since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's summit with North Korea's reclusive leader, but the main opposition party could still make gains in coming national elections, according to a survey published yesterday. The poll in the national Asahi newspaper showed that 33 percent of respondents backed Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party, up from 27 percent earlier this month. The figure far outpaced support for the main opposition Democrats, whose public approval ratings fell to 12 percent from 19 percent. However, voters were more evenly split when asked about national elections for the upper house of Parliament in July. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said they wanted the LDP to boost its presence in the upper house, while 22 percent said they were rooting for the Democrats.
■ Hong Kong
Armed immigrants arrested
Hong Kong police yesterday arrested 26 suspected illegal Vietnamese immigrants armed with bullets and knives. Police spokeswoman T.K. Ng said officers found nine knives, a hammer and 22 bullets on the 25 men and one woman, but it wasn't immediately clear what the weapons were to be used for. Ng said the suspects are from the Vietnamese city of Haiphong and they are suspected to have traveled to Hong Kong on a boat that was found at a nearby beach. He said they were not immediately charged. The arrests come after another illegal Vietnamese immigrant with three bullets was caught hiding in a vehicle crossing into Hong Kong from China on Friday. Authorities said that the group arrested yesterday wasn't linked to the man arrested Friday.
■ Hong Kong
Smoking vigilante strikes
A Chinese anti-smoking activist has brought his unorthodox methods to Hong Kong, snatching cigarettes from unsuspecting locals in an office district, a newspaper reported yesterday. Zhang Yue spent Saturday spreading the word on the ills of smoking in the Wan Chai district, Ming Pao Daily News reported. The paper ran a picture of Zhang snatching a cigarette from the mouth of an elderly man. The 44-year-old native of Luoyang in central Henan province was inspired to activism by the death of his 26-year-old sister from brain cancer, an illness he suspects was caused by inhaling their father's smoke, the paper reported. The report said he has visited 69 Chinese cities in the past three years, snatching cigarettes from smokers, and his travels have left him in heavy debt. It said he borrowed 500 yuan (US$60) to finance his Hong Kong trip.
■ Iran
Quake death toll rises
At least 35 people were killed and 220 injured when a major earthquake struck a wide mountainous area north of the capital Tehran on Friday, according to a new toll released yesterday. Officials said nine people, including the governor of Qazvin province Massoud Emami, died when their helicopter crashed during a a flight to survey the damage in scattered villages in the Elburz mountain range. The chopper was believed to have hit a mountain in bad weather, a provincial official told the state news agency IRNA. Tehran University's Geophysics Institute said the quake-stricken area had been hit by 157 aftershocks since Friday. The tremors ranged from 1.5 to 5.5 on the Richter scale.
■ Iran
Tehran cautions IAEA
Tehran warned the International Atomic Energy Agency yesterday not to put too much pressure on Iran lest it end its cooperation altogether. "Iran is still bound by its commitments," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. "There is no sign from our side that we will question our cooperation, but the agency should not create an atmosphere that pushes our leadership to doubt this cooperation," he said. His comments came two weeks before the UN nuclear watchdog is due to again examine Iran's dossier amid ongoing suspicions that Tehran is using a bid to generate nuclear power as a cover for secret weapons development. Iran insists that its nuclear program is purely peaceful.
■ Burundi
Elections delayed
President Domitien Ndayizeye on Saturday said his government has approved a 12-month delay of elections that would end the term of the transition administration set up to halt an 11-year civil war. Opposition politicians slammed the proposed poll delay. Burundians were supposed to elect legislators in September, as provided for under peace deals that led to the formation of the transition government. The new legislators were then supposed to elect the president on Oct. 25, ending the term of the transitional administration that includes members of the former government and the main rebel groups. ``We realized that whatever we could do, it was difficult -- even impossible -- to have finished the electoral process by Nov. 1, 2004,'' Ndayizeye said. The new timetable would call for the elections to be concluded with the selection of a president by Oct. 29, 2005, officials said.
■ Israel
Defiance kept Vanunu going
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu says defiance kept him going during 18 years in prison for revealing the Jewish state's military secrets. "I told myself in the first days: Whatever I do, I shall get out of this prison as strong in mind and body as I am now," he said in an interview in Britain's Sunday Times, which first published his revelations about Israel's nuclear capabilities. Vanunu, 49, worked as a mid-level technician at the Dimona atomic reactor in the Negev desert between 1976 and 1985. He was jailed for 18 years in 1986 for treason after disclosing details and photographs of the reactor. He was kidnapped by Israel's Mossad spy agency for trial in Israel after being lured into a "honeytrap" by a female agent. "To move from being a free man, walking in the streets of London, to finding oneself in a cell is a huge fall -- like falling from a very high building," he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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