■ China
Slaughterhouse shuttered
Health inspectors have shut down an illegal slaughterhouse in northeastern China for butchering sick pigs, part of a sweeping effort to contain an outbreak of pig-borne disease that has killed 38 people. Inspectors swooped on the unregistered abbatoir in the city of Gongzhuling in Jilin province this week and found it had been supplying meat to a sausage factory in the provincial capital, Changchun, which had also been shut down. "Inspectors found six to eight tonnes of pork in the underground slaughterhouse, and our tests showed at least one tonne came from pigs who had died of illness," Liu Tienan, head of the provincial health inspection bureau, told reporters.
■ China
13 miners die in blaze
Thirteen coal miners died in an underground fire at a pit in northern China's Hebei province, state press said yesterday. The blaze started late Wednesday when wooden support pillars in shafts at the Taodingshan Coal Mine in Handan county caught fire, said the Yanzhao Metropolis Daily. It did not say what sparked the fire. Thirteen workers were underground at the time and they were all found dead Thursday, it said, adding that the mine was operating illegally after being ordered to shut a year ago. Earlier this week China ordered more than 5,000 unlicensed coal mines to suspend operations for safety inspections in a bid to improve one of its most dangerous industries. China's mines are considered the most deadly in the world, with safety often sacrificed to supply the fuel that is driving the country's rapid industrialization and economic growth. Thousands of miners die every year.
■ Hong Kong
Diplomat urges democracy
The new top US diplomat in Hong Kong yesterday called for more democracy in the former British colony that returned to Chinese rule eight years ago. "The United States wants Hong Kong to succeed," US Consul General James Cunningham said, adding that Washington supported "a high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong and the expansion of democracy." The territory enjoys Western-style freedoms under an arrangement dubbed "one country, two systems," but it has limited democracy. The legislature is partially elected and the territory's leader is picked by a 800-member committee dominated by pro-Beijing figures.
■ Australia
Speargun killer gets life
A man who confessed to murdering his pregnant wife and baby girl with a speargun received two life jail sentences yesterday from a judge who called his actions "unspeakably callous." John Myles Sharpe, 38, was ordered to spend a minimum 33 years in prison for the murders of his New Zealand-born wife, Anna Kemp 41, and the couple's 19-month-old daughter Gracie. During his trial in February, Sharpe pleaded guilty to killing Kemp with two speargun shots to the head as she slept in their Melbourne area home in March last year. Sharpe, a former bank worker, told police he buried his wife's body in a shallow grave behind their home and then four days later shot and killed Gracie with four spears in an act of "irrational bloody madness."
■ Australia
Authorities plan use of SMS
Authorities in Sydney unveiled plans yesterday to use SMS messaging and emails to evacuate the city center in the event of a terrorist attack. Under the plan, modelled on how British police handled last month's bombings in London, an emergency command center will use SMS texting, email and telephones to alert security managers and fire wardens in some 1,500 buildings in Sydney's business district. Building managers would use public address systems and electronic messaging to direct people to one of three pre-determined "marshalling sites" set up in open areas around the city center.
■ Hong Kong
Opera house to stay open
The territory's only Cantonese Opera venue has won a reprieve after the landlord bowed to public pressure and abandoned a rent hike. The Sunbeam Theatre -- which holds over 300 performances a year -- looked set to close at the end of this month after 33 years and be turned into a shopping mall when faced with a rent increase of US$25,000 a month to US$51,000. However, following a meeting with theater operators and the Home Affairs Secretary Patrick Ho Chi-ping, the owner, Toyo Mall, backed down and agreed to allow the show to go on until 2009 at the same monthly rent.
■ Turkey
Kurdish rebels attack
Five Turkish soldiers were killed and seven injured when Kurdish rebels attacked a regional command headquarters in eastern Turkey in the early hours of yesterday, the Anadolu news agency reported. Guerillas from the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) armed with long-range rifles and rockets attacked the regional headquarters in the Semdinli district of Hakkari at around 12:40am. The firefight lasted around 15 minutes before the PKK rebels escaped. Meanwhile, newspapers yesterday reported that a soldier taken hostage by PKK rebels last night was released unharmed Thursday night.
■ Germany
Man in phone-sex shocker
A court in Germany convicted a man for fraud after he racked up huge phone bills phoning a sex hotline from work and split the proceeds with a woman working at the service, authorities said Wednesday. "He wasn't calling for the stimulation," said a spokesman for the court in the western city of Duesseldorf. The court handed the 38-year-old an eight-month suspended jail sentence for the ruse which he cooked up with the hotline worker while working for a local medical insurer. German media said the man had made more than 160 calls within half a year, at a cost to his company of almost 16,000 euros (US$19,700).
■ Portugal
Woman weds philanderer
An 81-year-old Portuguese woman plans to remarry her former husband, who is ten years older, on Thursday, more than three decades after she left him because of his womanizing, a daily newspaper reported. "He behaved badly and out of jealousy I left him after three years. Now he is more calm, he doesn't run around with other women," Silvina Azenha told Correio da Manha. "Despite everything he was always the big love of my life. In the 33 years that we were separated, we never stopped talking to each other," she added.
■ Russia
Immigration increasing
The number of Russians returning to their homeland is increasing for the first time since the mass emigration that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, some fleeing a tide of anti-Russian sentiment stirred by pro-Western revolutions across the country's former empire. Figures from the federal state statistics service for the first three months of this year show net migration into Russia has more than doubled compared with the same period last year. The service said that from January to March there was a net migration into Russia of 29,505 people. A total of 11,661 people was recorded in the same period of 2004.
■ N Ireland
Many injured in riots
At least 40 police officers were injured during rioting in north Belfast on Thursday night that followed the arrests of six men in connection with a feud between Protestant guerrillas, police said yesterday. The hijacked driver's cab of a truck was driven at police lines during the rioting, and petrol bombs, paint bombs and fireworks thrown during the disturbance. A number of other vehicles, including a bus, were stolen and burnt, police said. The rioting came after police made six arrests in connection with the recent murders of three men, part of a feud between extremists who want Northern Ireland to remain British-ruled.
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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