■ China
Churchgoers detained
More than 200 members and clergy have been detained, a Shanghai church closed down and two US tourists harrassed in a renewed ccrackdown on unauthorized religious activity, a US-based activist says. The two Americans, both theological students, were detained last Tuesday while attending a church service with 41 Chinese at a home in Lutou, Hubei Province, Bob Fu, a church monitor based in Texas, said yesterday. The pair were released after seven hours of questioning. Police later released 30 of the 41 church members they had detained, Fu said. Shanghai officials ordered a 16-year-old church with 400 members to close down on July 26, Fu said, while about 100 high-school students attending a Bible school organized by their parents were interrogated by police on July 22 in Wanzhuang, Hebei Province.
■ Nepal
Army hunts soldiers
The government rushed hundreds of troops to the remote northwest to hunt for 146 soldiers missing after fierce fighting with Maoist rebels, but bad weather was hampering operations, a senior army officer said yesterday. Heavy monsoon rains were making it difficult for helicopters to land near the site of the weekend gun battle in the Kalikot district, the officer said. The rebels claimed to have killed 159 troops.
■ Malaysia
Haze sparks burning ban
The government has banned most forms of open burning, including outdoor cooking, in a desperate measure to ease the stifling haze blanketing Kuala Lumpur and surrounding areas due to smoke from forest fires in Indonesia.Visibility has been reduced to about 1km for the past week.
■ Hong Kong
Visit a suicide theme park?
A Hong Kong official said one of the territory's tiny islands could make a killing with a novel theme park based on its unsavoury reputation as a suicide spot, a media report said yesterday. The morbid suggestion to create a ghost-town attraction where guests were dared to spend the night in "haunted flats" came at a meeting of local leaders on little Cheung Chau island. Councillor Lam Kit-sing said the island should capitalize on the grisly reputation of one of its holiday homes, where 20 people have taken their lives in the past eight years. Another five people attempted suicide there.
■ Australia
Lost Vivaldi work performed
A small part of a newly identified choral work by baroque Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi was played for the first time in about 250 years yesterday after being uncovered by an Australian academic. Janice Stockigt of the University of Melbourne said the 11-movement Dixit Dominus for choir and soloists, which she uncovered in Dresden this year, would be played in full in the German city next year. Stockigt said the work had previously been attributed to Baldassarre Galuppi, a Venetian contemporary of Vivaldi, since it first appeared in Galuppi's name in Dresden's Catholic Court Church in the 1750s.
■ China
Protesters blocked, detained
Chinese villagers resettled to make way for the massive Three Gorges dam project were harassed by officials and prevented from petitioning the central government about pollution, a human rights group said yesterday. Five villagers representing the 500 residents of Yangguidian, a village in central Hubei Province, were taken off a bus by about 40 police officers on Saturday as they tried to travel to Beijing, the New York-based group Human Rights in China said in a statement. The villagers were relocated to Yangguidian in 1993 in order to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project, it said.
■ Australia
Someone beheading roos
More than a dozen kangaroos have been found beheaded in the outer suburbs of the southern city of Melbourne over the past three weeks, sparking a call by wildlife officials yesterday for more information. The headless carcasses of 15 kangaroos have been found in the suburbs northeast of Melbourne since mid-July, but wildlife officials say they don't know who, or what, is causing the deaths. Deb Ganderton, an official in the Nillumbik Shire, said most of the bodies had been badly decomposed or burned, and the lack of intact remains was hampering investigations into the deaths by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or RSPCA, and the state parks and conservation departments.
■ China
Bring in the British butlers
A Shanghai domestic services company is hiring British butlers, famous for their scrupulously finicky standards, to help bring local maids up to snuff. Maids and nannies, known in China as "ayis," are commonly employed in the cities to handle housekeeping and child care, even for middle-class families, thanks to a huge supply of cheap labor available from the countryside. But the level of housekeeping, cooking and child-minding skills varies widely. It's a business opportunity just begging to be seized, says Zhu Wei, manager of the Shanghai Boni Housekeeping Service Co.
■ Croatia
Czechs urged to be safer
The Croatian Interior Ministry urged Monday the country's tourism workers to teach Czech tourists about potential maritime dangers and not just to charge them for accommodation. A total of 14 Czech tourists have lost their lives in several accidents since the beginning of this tourist season, MUP spokesman Zlatko Mehun. "I call upon on all those who rent rooms and other tourism workers to teach Czech tourists about the secrets of the sea," Mehun said expressing concern about the number of dead Czech tourists this year. He was speaking a day after a 16-year-old Czech tourist was killed by lightning while sailing near the Adriatic town of Zadar.
■ Germany
Eight killed in fire
A fire in an apartment block in Berlin overnight killed eight people, four of them children, German officials said yesterday. The fire broke out in the stairwell of the five-storey building in the German capital's central Moabit district but the cause was not immediately clear. "In their panic the victims tried to escape by using the stairwell," said a fire brigade spokesman. He said the death toll was the second highest in a fire in Berlin since World War II.
■ United States
Stones' Jagger likely `mum'
Keith Richards says if the Rolling Stones were a mom-and-pop operation, Mick Jagger would be the "Mum." "Mick has to get up in the morning with a plan," Richards tells Newsweek magazine in its latest issue. "Who he's going to call, what he's going to eat, where he's going to go. Me, I wake up, praise the Lord, then make sure all the phones are turned off. If we were a mum-and-pop operation, then he'd be Mum." The Stones' new tour kicks off Aug. 21 in Boston. Their latest album, A Bigger Bang, is due for release next month. "I could see why some people may think we're phoning it in after all this time," the 61-year-old Richards says.
■ United States
Publishing pioneer dies
Publisher John Johnson, whose Ebony and Jet magazines countered stereotypical coverage of blacks after World War II and turned him into one of the most influential black leaders in the US, died Monday, his company said. He was 87. Johnson died of heart failure at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after a long illness, said LaTrina Blair, promotions manager with Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Co. Johnson broke new ground by bringing positive portrayals of blacks into a mass-market publication and encouraging corporations to use black models in advertising aimed at black consumers. "We have lost a legend, a pioneer, a visionary," said Earl Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise magazine.
■ United States
Man admits to murder bid
An HIV-positive man admitted Monday that he tried to kill four police detectives and a psychiatric orderly by either biting them or spitting his blood in their faces, the authorities said. His guilty pleas were part of a deal with prosecutors in exchange for a 13-year prison sentence. The man, Robert Murray, 32, was about to begin his trial in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on charges that he spit saliva and blood into the faces of four police detectives trying to process him at the 25th Precinct station house in Harlem after he was arrested on April 8, 2003, on charges of promoting prostitution.
■ United Kingdom
`Popetown' resurrected
Popetown, the cartoon satire about the Vatican that proved too hot -- or too unfunny -- for the BBC to handle last year, on Monday was to be be released as a DVD by a private company. The 10-part program, originally commissioned in 2002, which features an infantile, pogostick-wielding pontiff voiced by comedienne Ruby Wax, provoked the wrath of many British Catholics, who orchestrated a campaign to secure its cancelation. Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell declared the series, which he had not seen, as "an irreverent, gratuitous and publicly funded attack on [the] faith."
■ Brazil
Record heist used tunnel
Thieves tunneled into a Brazilian Central Bank branch to steal US$65 million, officials said on Monday. The country's biggest-ever bank heist was one of the largest in the world. Thieves penetrated the Banco Central branch in the northeastern city of Fortaleza over the weekend after digging an 80m tunnel, the bank said in a statement. They carted out 13.5 tonnes in notes without setting off alarms, police said. The robbers operated from a nearby house where they created a fictitious gardening company, which allowed them to get rid of earth they dug without raising suspicion, police said.
■ Iran
Journalist ends strike
Dissident journalist Akbar Ganji has broken his eight-week-old hunger strike after calls by family and friends concerned about his deteriorating health, a judiciary spokesman said yesterday. "Thankfully his condition is better than before ... He has recently broken his hunger strike," he said. "It seems that this was due to the requests made by other people for him to end his hunger strike." Ganji's plight has provoked comments of outrage and concern from the US, the EU and numerous human-rights groups. The 46-year-old was imprisoned in 2001 after writing a string of stories linking officials to the murder of political dissidents.
■ Canada
Engine failure ruled out
With investigators on Monday ruling out engine or mechanical failure in the Air France crash last week, runway conditions, stormy weather and pilot error now appear to be the focus of their probe. The chief investigator, Real Levasseur of Canada's Transportation Safety Board, declined on Monday to concede that the aircraft slammed into a ravine and exploded on impact due in part to "human error." He acknowledged, however, that the flight data and voice recorders had indicated there were no engine or equipment failures, leading investigators to now focus on the heavy rains and winds during the afternoon landing, as well as a slight decline in the east-west runway.
■ United States
More daylight-saving time
The US will have an additional four weeks of daylight-saving time beginning in 2007. Some people are cheering, while others worry. The energy law signed on Monday by US President George W. Bush specifies daylight-saving time to begin three weeks earlier and be extended by a week. Sponsors of the proposal say it will save energy because people won't have to turn on their lights so early in the evening. But some worry that the new regime will have their children waiting for school buses in the early morning darkness as late as mid-March. Farmers complain the time change adversely affects livestock and disrupts milking schedules.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
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