■ China
`NY Times' staffer arrested
PHOTO AP
The Chinese authorities have formally arrested a researcher in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times on charges of disclosing state secrets to foreigners. The researcher, Zhao Yan, who was detained Sept. 17 on suspicion of that crime, has not been allowed to see his lawyer or relatives. Charges under the stringent state security law were filed on Wednesday, according to a notice received by Zhao's family, but no details of his alleged misdeeds have been disclosed. Formal arrest on security charges, in the Chinese criminal system, is a major step toward a secret trial and virtually certain conviction, with a long prison sentence possible. Zhao has been employed by the Times since May of this year to assist with research and translations.
■ Australia
Drug-traffickers arrested
Three Chinese nationals were charged with trafficking drugs after customs officers found A$100 million (US$74 million) worth of "ice", or crystal methylamphetamine, inside hollowed-out candles in a ship from China, police said yesterday. The 125kg haul was seized in a joint operation involving federal police and customs which is believed to have dismantled the Australian base of an international narcotic smuggling syndicate. Police say it was the second largest seizure of the drug to be made in Australia after the 233kg shipment found hidden among cartons of rice sticks in a shipping container from China in May, 2003.
■ China
Hope fades for miners
The death toll from a devastating coal mine disaster in China rose to 64 Friday as hopes of finding any survivors amongst a further 84 missing workers faded. Two more bodies were pulled out of the collapsed Daping mine in China's Henan province Friday, raising the death toll to 64, the Xinhua news agency said. Another 84 miners remained trapped inside. "At present, the chance of survival is slim," said Song Guangtai, deputy director of the Henan bureau of coal mine safety supervision, speaking to reporters from the blast site. Although the gas density had been reduced and a passageway into the mine had been repaired overnight to speed up the flow of rescuers and rescue vehicles, gas levels in some areas remain dangerously high, raising fears of another explosion, officials at the scene said.
■ Portugal
Lottery tip nets big win
A Portuguese car mechanic who was given a lottery ticket as a tip, after earlier refusing to buy it, has scooped a 50,000 euro jackpot, a local newspaper reported Wednesday. Lottery salesman Jose Macedo
tried to sell the five euro (US$6.25) winning ticket
to Artur Luis but ended up giving it to the mechanic to show his appreciation for the small amount charged to fix his car, daily newspaper Correio da Manha said. When the numbers on
the national lottery ticket
were drawn Monday, the mechanic won the 50,000 euro (US$62,620) first prize.
■ Germany
No cash for file recovery
An ambitious plan to solve the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle -- re-assembling 16,000 sacks of torn-up communist secret police
files -- has made no progress almost a year after it was announced in Germany.
A report on Thursday said funding had again been denied for even a pilot version of the scheme. The Tagesspiegel of Berlin was to report in yesterday's edition that no funds could be spared next year. Scientists announced last November that they had devised a way to create 1.2 billion images
of the paper scraps and use computer power to match them up into the correct patterns and sequence. The papers contain explosive information about spies and informers.
■ France
Accidents linked to divorce
A new French study suggests that people in
the throes of a divorce are
more likely to have a traffic accident. Respondents
were asked about health problems and stressful life events endured during the preceding 12 months. "We weren't specifically studying divorce," said Emmanuel Lagarde, who led the study at the National Health and Medical Research Institute. His team compiled a list of roughly 30 stressful events -- including hospitalization, the death of a loved one, departure of children -- and found that only separation and divorce increased the risk. This stress, Lagarde claims, changes the driver's behavior, possibly by decreasing attentiveness.
■ Romania
Offer made to king
Romania's government intends to offer the Balkan nation's former king 30 million euros (US$37.85 million) to settle a claim
for historic property seized
by the ousted communist regime. If approved by parliament, the decision is expected to end a dispute between the government and King Michael, who has been seeking to recover one of Romania's most popular tourist attractions since a 2001 law settling the issue
of assets seized by the communists was passed. The 82-year-old former monarch has laid claim to the Peles domain, including the Peles Castle built by his great uncle King Carol I.
■ Georgia
Illegal arms cache seized
A group illegally using and trading decommissioned weapons was seized in Georgia, Georgian Defense Minister Giya Baramidze said late on Thursday. A store of partly demolished weapons, including air-defense guns, grenade launchers and massive amounts of ammunition worth some US$185 million was found near a former military base of Tsnori in eastern Georgia, Baramidze said. Three employees in a local military training center were arrested on suspicion of having decommissioned, taken apart and sold weapons that the defense ministry judged still fit for use, he added.
■ United States
747 drops engine in flight
A cargo plane from Chicago landed safely at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after dropping an engine some-where over Michigan. The Kalitta Air jet took off from O'Hare International Airport late Wednesday and was bound for New York's Kennedy International Airport when it reported mechanical problems with one of its engines, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokeswoman said. The Boeing 747 was able to fly but was diverted as a safety precaution to Detroit, where it landed without incident, officials said. No one was injured. After the landing, airline personnel discovered the engine was completely gone. Authorities searched on Thursday for the engine, which may have fallen into Lake Michigan.
■ United Kingdom
Insider exposes Labour rift
British Prime Minister Tony Blair offered Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown a deal in which he would step down before the next general election if Brown backed Britain's euro entry, according to a former minister cited yesterday in The Independent newspaper. Clare Short, the former international development secretary, says in her upcoming book An Honourable Deception that Brown refused the deal, according to The Indepen-dent. Excerpts of her book published yesterday quote Short's own diary entries detailing the degrading relations between Labour's most powerful pair.
■ United Kingdom
UK gun crimes climb
Crime in Britain, which is set to be one of the main battle-grounds of the next general election, has fallen but the number of gun-related and violent offences has increased, official figures showed on Thursday. The Home Office said overall recorded crime had fallen by 5 percent in the three months to June compared to the same quarter last year, with significant falls in vehicle thefts, burglaries and robberies. But gun crime rose 3 percent over the full year to June with a 35 percent rise in the use of replica weapons. There was also an 11 percent increase in recorded incidents of violence.
■ Cuba
Castro undergoes surgery
President Fidel Castro announced late Thursday in an open letter that he underwent surgery after he fell late Wednesday and fractured his left knee and his right arm. Castro's operation took three hours, after which he was put in a plaster cast. He said he refused to undergo general anesthesia because he did not want to abandon his government responsibilities due to a temporary mishap. Castro, 78, tripped and fell as he walked down some steps from a stage after giving an hour-long speech. Castro's 1,183 word letter describes the moment he fell, his ambulance trip to the hospital and details of the operation.
■ Norway
Ghostly threat ignored
A Norwegian's threat to haunt anyone who tampered with his will didn't hold up in -- or send a chill through -- a court. The man, who wasn't identified, died last year and left a will dividing his possessions among a long list of friends because he had no direct heirs, state radio network NRK reported on Thursday. To be sure that no one challenged the document, he threated to haunt any who tampered with it. The judge declared the will void since the two witnesses who signed it testified they didn't know what the document was.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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