■ Afghanistan
Bomb kills police chief
A senior police official was killed in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday when a bomb attached to his office chair exploded, doctors said. Haji Ajab Shah was killed at the police headquarters of the city, the capital of Nangarhar Province, as the workday began. "His body is in the morgue," said a doctor at the hospital to which Shah was taken. The attack was the latest incident in a wave of violence in the run-up to landmark elections in September, most of which has been blamed on remnants of the ousted Taliban regime and their Islamic militant allies including al-Qaeda.
■ China
Radiation gadget missing
Hundreds of police in Shanghai were searching yesterday for a small cylinder containing a gamma-ray apparatus capable of transmitting fatal doses of radiation, Chinese state press reported yesterday. The 10kg box containing the instrument used to perform industrial radiography on construction sites disappeared early Saturday after a company driver parked a car carrying the cylinder outside his flat, the Shanghai Daily said. When he returned, the canister clearly marked with a radioactive sign, was missing. Press reports said a two day-search in the city's northern Jingshan district had yet to yield results.
■ Indonesia
Potholes cause protests
Indonesian residents protesting at the state of their street have planted banana trees and released catfish in its huge potholes, a report said yesterday. "We want this street to be immediately repaired," Pos Kota newspaper quoted protester Otong Sasmita as saying. He said Perjuangan avenue in Bekasi just east of Jakarta was used by heavy vehicles serving a nearby industrial center and had been potholed for years. Protesters have released baby eels and catfish in water-filled potholes and planted scores of banana trees in others.
■ China
Tycoon gets 6-year term
A real estate tycoon once ranked as China's 11th-richest man was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison on charges of fraud and stock manipulation. Zhou Zhengyi (周正毅) was sentenced by the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Court, the official Xinhua News Agency said. A court spokesman declined to confirm the report. Zhou was ranked in 2002 by Forbes Magazine as number 11 in its list of China's wealthiest people. It estimated his fortune at that time at US$320 million. He made millions running restaurants and shops before branching out into property development, but ran afoul of regulators and was arrested in September. It wasn't clear if time Zhou has already spent in jail would be counted toward the sentence. There was no word on whether Zhou would appeal.
■ Malaysia
Whipping demos halted
In the face of public condemnation, Malaysia has suspended a nationwide program to hold whipping demonstrations in primary schools, news reports said yesterday. The road show of sorts, which was aimed at reducing the rate of serious juvenile offences like rape and drug trafficking, will continue to be held in secondary schools for older students, said deputy internal security minister Chia Kwang Chye. Chia said the government would also conduct a study to decide whether the program should be abandoned or changes made should be made to it.
■ United States
Last Civil War widow dies
Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died on Monday in Alabama, ending an ascent from sharecropper's daughter
to the belle of 21st-century Confederate history buffs. She was 97, dying nearly
140 years after the Civil War ended. Her marriage in the 1920s to Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin and her longevity made her a celebrated final link to the old Confederacy. After living in obscurity and poverty
for most of her life, in
her last years the Sons of Confederate Veterans took her to conventions and rallies, often with a small Confederate battle flag in her hand. "I don't see nothing wrong with the flag flying," she said frequently.
■ United Kingdom
Britain backs PRC on arms
Britain is likely to back anticipated moves by some EU nations to end a 15-year-long ban on arms sales to China, a report said late Monday. Britain is expected to line up alongside France and Germany in arguing that the restrictions, imposed after the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, should be ended, the Times said. However any moves would most likely come to nothing as the US would oppose the move and could even block European nations which sell arms to China from having access to US military technology, the newspaper said yesterday.
■ Bosnia
Blood to identify victims
Teams are to be sent across Europe to collect blood samples from relatives of victims of the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia in
a bid to identify some 25,000 people still unaccounted for. Thousands of bodies have been exhumed from about 300 mass graves in Bosnia alone, but most have yet
to be identified. Launching
the drive on Monday, the International Commission
on Missing Persons said it would use missing persons' associations and cultural clubs to try to track down expatriate families scattered across Europe.
■ Georgia
Troops sent to border
Hundreds of Georgian troops were deployed at
the border of South Ossetia yesterday after the leader
of the pro-Russian separatist region vowed to fight back if invaded. In a show of force amid rising tensions, Georgia sent in troops to the border of the breakaway region
on Monday. Russian peacekeepers are patrolling
inside South Ossetia where
most people hold Russian passports. Military sources said some 400 interior ministry troops had been sent to Georgia's trading posts with South Ossetia
and that their main task was
to stamp out illegal trade.
But Georgia has agreed to withdraw some of the troops after reaching an agreement with South Ossetia's Russian authorities.
■ Portugal
Seven on trial over abuse
Seven people, including one of Portugal's top TV personalities, were ordered on Monday to stand trial for sexually abusing children at an orphanage, Lusa news agency said, but charges were dropped against a former minister. The case has riveted the Iberian nation since allegations of sexual abuse surfaced in late 2002. The allegations have centered on a Lisbon orphanage run by the Casa Pia child-shelter system, which cares for thousands of children nationwide. Six men and one woman will
be tried, Lusa said. Charges were dropped against former Cabinet minister Paulo Pedroso and another suspect.
■ United Kingdom
Cheese pursuit injures 21
It is perhaps a mark of Britain's proudly-worn reputation for eccentricity that one of its least-heralded yet highly dangerous sporting events sees competitors risk life and limb in the name of dairy produce. In all, 21 people were hurt during Friday's annual cheese rolling race at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, central England, where competitors pelt recklessly down a steep slope in pursuit of a 32kg cheese. The rewards for such peril are, of course, minimal. The winners receives the by-now rather dented cheese, while the runner-up gets ?5 (US$9) and third place secures a princely ?3 (US$5.5). Yet modern-day winners can count themselves lucky. From 1941 to 1954, when Britain faced food rationing during and after World War II, competitors raced for a wooden cheese containing just a piece of the real stuff inserted into a small hole.
■ Russia
Kremlin gets imperial mark
The ultimate endorsement a company can have may well be the coat of arms of the ruler on your product. In a bid to immerse itself in the commercial age, the Kremlin has started offering its emblem and the chance to be known as an official supplier to the Russian elite to certain favored products. By the end of the year select goods will be allowed to carry a small crest bearing the red, white and blue of the Russian flag and the Kremlin's golden gate and eagle. They can also say they have been "admitted for use in the official residence of the president of the Russian Federation, `the Moscow Kremlin.'" The move to create a Kremlin crest of approval similar to the Queen of England's will intensify suggestions that Vladimir Putin's administration is becoming more like its tsarist predecessors rather than a democratically elected state.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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