■ 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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS