■ China
Expedition sent to Everest
A group of Chinese researchers have set off on an expedition to check a theory that Mount Everest is growing by about one centimeter a year. Twenty-nine scientists and mountaineers were taking part in the fourth such mission to remeasure the world's tallest peak. The re-survey of the region will help to understand the mountain's reaction to global climate change," expedition captain Kang Shichang said. Chinese media last year reported that a staggering seven percent of the country's glaciers were vanishing annually under the sweltering sun, including those covering Everest. Leading glacier expert Yan Tandong said as many as 64 percent of China's glaciers may be gone by 2050 if current trends continue.
■ Indonesia
Woman executed
An Indonesian woman was executed by firing squad early yesterday for multiple murders and mutilating her victims more than a decade ago. The execution of Astini, 49, took place in a secret location in Surabaya. Astini was executed by a 12-member firing squad from the Indonesian police, after the Indonesian president and the country's Supreme Court turned down her appeal for clemency. Astini was found guilty eight years ago of murdering and mutilating three women on separate occasions because they were unable to repay their debts to her.
■ Australia
Boats hunt 6m killer shark
Boats were out yesterday looking for a 6m great white shark that made off with a 26-year-old snorkel diver off the West Australian coast 500km north of Perth. Geoff Brazier, a deckhand on the luxury cruiser Matrix, was killed instantly in the Saturday afternoon attack. His body has not been recovered. The 24m Matrix was on its maiden voyage and was moored off the Abrolhos Islands. Six other swimmers were in the water when the shark attacked Brazier. The West Australian state government has ordered a hunt for the killer shark. Great whites are a protected species in Australia, but governments pander to public shark fears and go after those fish that kill.
■ South Korea
Cyber attacks attempted
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said that it was guarding against a possible Japanese cyber attack on its Web site as emotions run high in the two countries over a territorial dispute. Computer experts detected signs of alleged hackers in Japan trying to send massive loads of data to the ministry's Web site. "Our Web site has not been down, but we maintain our firewall in case there is a cyber attack," a ministry spokesman said. South Korea and Japan are locked in a territorial row over a set of rocky islets, called Dokdo and Takeshima in Japan, that lie roughly midway between the two nations.
■ Thailand
Bomb injures 15
At least 15 people were injured in two bomb explosions early yesterday in Thailand's southernmost provinces. They were the latest incidents of separatist violence in the three southern, mainly Muslim provinces, where nearly 600 people have been killed since unrest started a year ago. Seven policemen and four teenagers were injured in the Muang district of Yala province. The policemen were questioning the teenagers near a railway line when a bomb exploded. In a separate incident, a bomb hidden under a tree close to a checkpoint went off in neighboring Narathiwat province, wounding a child and 3 soldiers.
■ Australia
Car fire kills toddlers
Australian police yesterday were investigating the cause of a fire that incinerated three young children inside a car in Bendigo, Victoria. The siblings -- boys aged 2 and 3 and a 4-year-old girl -- were believed to be playing with matches inside the car when it caught fire while parked next to the house. Their mother, six months pregnant with her fourth child, was inside the house when the fire started but was too late to save her children. The family home was damaged when the fire spread from the car to the house.
■ Yemen
Muslim militants killed
Four supporters of a slain anti-US cleric in Yemen were killed on Saturday while trying to flee from police after a shootout, the official news agency Saba said. It said a group of followers of rebel leader Hussein al-Houthi -- who was killed by Yemeni forces last year -- had sped away in a car after exchanging fire with police at a weapons market in Saada province, north of the capital, Sanaa. Four of the men were killed when the car overturned after colliding with a security vehicle, Saba said, adding that three other rebels and a policeman were injured. Houthi was killed last September after two months of clashes with security forces in which over 200 rebels and troops died.
■ Kyrgyzstan
Police station stormed
About 10,000 pro-democracy protesters stormed a police station and forced workers to flee a governor's office in Kyrgyzstan yesterday, a government spokesman said, in the biggest demonstration since allegedly fraudulent elections last month. The demonstrators threw stones at police and government officials in the southern city of Jalal-Abad, regional government spokesman Orazaly Karasartov said. Police fled to the roof of their building, firing shots into the air. It was not clear how many people were hurt.
■ Sudan
Scores die from bad booze
Authorities said 21 people died and at least 6 went blind from drinking illegal alcohol in the past few days and vowed to crack down on its producers in Khartoum and central Sudan. The Interior Ministry said in a statement received yesterday that it was starting a campaign to bring those who made the contaminated drink to justice and deal with illegal factories where alcohol is produced in Khartoum and Gezira states. "The Interior Ministry is warning people of the dangers of drinking contaminated alcohol after information was provided to them that a number of people had been killed or gone blind after drinking the substance," the statement said. Sudan implements Islamic law which prevents the sale of alcohol.
■ United Kingdom
Bombing suspect arrested
Police arrested on Saturday a man wanted by Spanish police in connection with the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people a year ago. Moutaz Almallah Dabas, 39, was arrested by British extradition and anti-terrorist police in Slough west of London and is due to appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court on Monday, a police spokeswoman said. "He was arrested under a European arrest warrant which was issued by Spanish authorities for alleged terrorist offences, in particular the involvement in the Madrid bombings," she said. His arrest follows the arrest on Friday in Spain of his brother Mohannad Almallah Dabas.
■ Canada
Team to verify Peary's claim
Five men led by a British explorer are attempting to reach the North Pole in record time on huskie-drawn sledges similar to those used to set a disputed record 96 years ago. American explorer Robert Peary, naming himself the first to reach the North Pole in 1909, said he trekked 413 nautical miles (765km) from Cape Columbia in northern Nunavut, the Inuit territory of Canada opposite Greenland, in 37 days. The time has been disputed ever since. The Barclays Capital Ultimate North Expedition, led by British explorer Tom Avery, aims to verify Peary's claim once and for all by matching his 37-day time for the same voyage.
■ Brazil
Kravitz donates guitar
US rock star Lenny Kravitz gave a US$5,000 electric guitar to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday to help him raise funds for his struggling campaign to wipe out hunger in the South American country by next year. The Epiphone Flying V guitar used by Kravitz on his Latin American tour will be auctioned on the Internet at www.fomezero.gov.br and proceeds will go to building water cisterns in poor regions of Brazil's northeast, state news agency Radiobras reported.
■ United States
`Goodfella' on drug charges
Former mobster-turned-chef Henry Hill, whose gangland experiences inspired the movie GoodFellas, has been charged with felony drug possession. Police said Hill's luggage was searched on Aug. 15 at the North Platte Regional Airport and methamphetamine and cocaine was found. On Friday, Lincoln County Judge Kent Florum sent him to district court on a felony charge of drug possession. Hill, portrayed by Ray Liotta in GoodFellas, had sought refuge in the witness protection program after agreeing to testify against his former mob bosses from New York. However, he left the witness protection program and now lives in North Platte with his wife. He has been working as a chef and helping establish an Italian restaurant.
■ Mexico
Murder suspects caught
Mexican authorities said on Saturday they arrested five men suspected of murdering women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where hundreds of women have died in a more than decade-old wave of killings. The five men were arrested over the past three weeks for the murders of women in 1997, 1999, 2001 and this year, police officials said. Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas, has been the scene of more than 340 murders of women since the early 1990s. The women were beaten and strangled in the border town that is home to giant multinational manufacturing plants, in a string of murders that provoked outrage in Mexico and abroad. About a third of the victims were raped.
■ United States
Blake juror releases album
A juror who helped acquit actor Robert Blake of killing his wife is promoting a six-song recording he produced during Blake's trial. Roberto Emerick, 30, publicized his album, Judgment Day, during an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live soon after the acquittal. Emerick said he has received hate mail from critics who accuse him of making money off Bonny Lee Bakley's death. Emerick said he and his rock band, Mission in the Hills, recorded songs before he was summoned for jury duty. As the trial wore on, he realized he needed an outlet to express his feelings.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
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