■ China
Fifty-seven trapped in mine
Officials have raised to 57 the number of coal miners trapped below ground by a flood in Shanxi Province and detained nine managers accused of illegally operating the mine, the government's Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The officials increased the estimated number of missing after speaking to miners' families. Local safety officials initially "tried to cover up the accident" and said that only five people were missing, Xinhua said. Water flooded the shaft on Thursday at the Xinjing Coal Mine in Zuoyun County as some 145 miners were working underground.
■ New Zealand
Ex-Salvo accused of abuse
John Francis Gainsford, 69, a former captain in the New Zealand Salvation Army, has been charged with 28 counts of sexual violation and indecencies on young people while managing a children's home in the 1970s, police announced yesterday. The charges involve seven people who lodged complaints of being abused by Gainsford at the Bramwell Booth Salvation Army children's home in the South Island town of Temuka between January 1973 and 1975.
■ Australia
Trading guru arrested
A US futures and commodities trading guru and two-time senate hopeful has been arrested in Sydney for alleged tax evasion, officials said yesterday. Larry Richard Williams, 64, was detained at Sydney airport and later appeared in Central Local Court where he was remanded in custody until tomorrow so that Australian officials could speak with their US counterparts on whether he should be granted bail. The US Internal Revenue Service is seeking Williams' extradition over US$1.5 million in alleged tax evasion from 1999 to 2001.
■ China
Fake drug kills nine
Nine people have died after being injected with a fake drug made by a Chinese company and 14 executives have been detained for questioning, state media said yesterday. The victims died after being injected with fake Armillarisni A, made by the Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical, based in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, Xinhua news agency quoted hospital sources as saying. The nine died in the southern city of Guangzhou, it said. Police had taken five of the detained executives to Guangzhou for questioning, the China Daily said. The drug is used to treat gall bladder, liver and gastric disorders.
■ Hong Kong
Tong finds backers for film
Hong Kong director Stanley Tong (唐季禮) said on Sunday he has secured financing for a movie set during the Nanking Massacre. The film could influence already tense Sino-Japanese relations because of its sensitive content. Tong said he has found financial backers in Germany, the US, China and Hong Kong, as well as Japan, for the film, with a budget of at least US$35 million. Tong said the film, tentatively called Diary, won't focus on the atrocities in Nanjing, although its events will take place during the same period as the killings. "The main thrust of the story is events during that time in Nanjing, but it may not necessarily be the massacre," he said in a phone interview.
■ Philippines
Journalist killed in ambush
A broadcast journalist who criticized local officials in his radio show was killed in an ambush on his way to work in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, yesterday, his employers and local officials said. Fernando Batul, 36, was gunned down by two men on a motorbike, his co-worker Lenny Escaro said on DZRH radio. Batul, who worked for DYPR radio and had served as deputy mayor of Puerto Princesa survived an attack last month when two grenades were tossed at his home but failed to explode, Escaro said. She said the victim had publicly criticized local officials including the mayor of Puerto Princesa, Edward Hagedorn. Hagedorn, denying any involvement in the ambush, offered a 2 million peso (US$38,000) bounty for information leading to the arrest of the killers.
■ North Korea
AP opens in Pyongyang
AP Television News, the international video division of the Associated Press, opened a full-time office in North Korea yesterday, becoming the first Western news organization able to provide regular coverage of that nation. Under the agreement, international staff from APTN -- headquartered in Britain -- will work with local staff recruited from Korean Radio and Television. The announcement followed four years of negotiations with the state broadcaster, Korean Radio and Television, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. APTN Executive Director Nigel Baker, in Pyongyang for the opening of the bureau, called it "a groundbreaking opportunity."
■ New Zealand
Winning family go out to eat
What does an "ordinary" family do when they learn they have won the country's biggest ever Lotto prize of nearly NZ$18 million (US$11.2 million)? Go out for breakfast, it was reported yesterday. "We thought we'd go all out and buy the full breakfast," said the winners, who chose to stay anonymous, according to Warren Salisbury, of New Zealand Lotteries. He told newsmen they were "absolutely stunned" and said, "We are just ordinary people but now we get to live an extraordinary life."
■ Turkey
Judge killer jailed
The suspected Islamist assailant in a lethal attack on a court was jailed on Sunday, along with three alleged collaborators, the Anatolia news agency reported. The attack provoked political tensions in Ankara as secularists displayed their anger and accused the government of creating an atmosphere in which such incidents could take place. A judge who questioned the four men decided they should be imprisoned, pending trial. Alparslan Arslan, a 29-year-old Istanbul lawyer shouted: "I'm a soldier of Allah" as he burst into Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, on Wednesday, killing a senior judge and wounding four others.
■ United Kingdom
War crimes case mulled
The attorney general flew to Israel on Sunday on a mission to determine whether there might be grounds for bringing war crimes prosecutions in the UK over the shooting of two Britons. Relatives of the award-winning cameraman James Miller and the student activist Tom Hurndall have asked Lord Goldsmith to consider prosecutions under the Geneva Conventions Act. The coroner, Andrew Reid, who presided over the inquests into both deaths, has also written to the attorney general to ask if any further legal action can be taken. Juries in both inquests found that the men had been unlawfully killed.
■ Spain
Peace talks with ETA soon
The prime minister said on Sunday that peace talks with the Basque separatist group ETA could start as early as next month. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero made the announcement during his first visit to the Basque region since ETA declared a "permanent" ceasefire yesterday. "Next month I'll announce to all political parties the start of a process of dialogue with ETA which will end the violence," he said, at a meeting in Barakaldo. His decision to set a timescale for talks reflects the government's belief that ETA is respecting its ceasefire -- despite street violence in the Basque region and mixed signals from the separatists. In an interview last week, ETA representatives told the Basque newspaper Gara that the truce did not imply it had renounced violence.
■ United States
Four killed in church
A man shot dead four worshipers in a Louisiana church on Sunday, kidnapped his three children and his wife and later killed her, police said. The suspect, Anthony Bell, 25, began shooting early on Sunday in the church in Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge, police said. Three people were found dead at the scene, while a fourth victim died later at a hospital, police said. A fifth person was wounded. "It is the ultimate invasion when you invade the safety of a church," the police spokesman said. The survivor was the church pastor, who was the mother of Bell's slain wife, police said.
■ United States
Jefferson angered by raid
A lawyer for Representative William Jefferson said the FBI raid of the Louisiana Democrat's congressional office on Saturday night was "outrageous" and unnecessary. Jefferson, an eight-term congressman, is under investigation for his role in helping a Nigerian company with an Internet venture. He has maintained his innocence, but a Kentucky businessman pleaded guilty earlier this month to bribing Jefferson.
■ Isreal
Group to sue Ahmadinejad
A group of Israeli lawmakers and former diplomats plan to sue Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accusing him of conspiring to commit genocide, one of those involved said yesterday. Ahmadinejad recently said Israel should be wiped off the map and dismissed the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth." Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, said Ahmadinejad's comments violate the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, to which Iran is a signatory. "From our preliminary assessment, there's no question that Ahmadinejad violated the genocide convention, which specifically addresses the issue of incitement to genocide," Gold said.
■ United States
N Korean defectors arrive
The first six of what advocates hope will be a wave of North Korean defectors fleeing poverty, torture, sexual slavery and other abuses arrived in southern California this weekend, greeted with hugs and flowers by members of a church coalition. The two men and four women, who ranged in age from 20 to 36, were the first to arrive in the US since President George W. Bush signed the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004. They were greeted at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday by leaders of the Korean Church Coalition, comprised of members of four Southern California congregations.
■ Chile
New social agenda touted
Chile will use income from its booming copper exports to advance a new social agenda by investing in health, housing and education, President Michelle Bachelet said in her first state-of-the-nation address. The spending should create 130,000 jobs, Bachelet told Chileans in the speech on Sunday, vowing to also maintain annual budget surpluses of at least 1 percent of GDP. Addressing Congress in the port city of Valparaiso, Chile's first female president also promised to seek "truth and justice" for the human rights violations during the 1973-90 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
■ Russia
Beslan militant revived
An Islamist militant who was supposedly killed during the carnage that ended the Beslan school siege has been "resurrected" by Russian investigators as a suspect in a recent assassination. Ali Taziyev, also known by the codename Magas, was allegedly one of the 41 hostage-takers who stormed a school in Beslan in September 2004. According to the official account of the siege, only one militant survived. However, investigators now suspect that Magas is one of two people involved in the organization of the assassination of the Ingush deputy interior minister, Dzhabrail Kostoyev, who died in a suicide car-bombing last Wednesday.
■ United Kingdom
N Ireland assembly to vote
Politicians in Northern Ireland were to assemble yesterday to vote on British Protestant and Irish Catholic leaders of a new power-sharing administration, but politicians and analysts said the effort appeared doomed to failure. The Northern Ireland Assembly wields the power to form, or block, a Catholic-Protestant administration as proposed by Northern Ireland's Good Friday accord of 1998. The last time assembly members elected administration leaders was in November 2001, and that coalition lasted less than a year before its collapse over an Irish Republican Army spying scandal.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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