■ China
Beijing opposes report
Beijing has denounced a US State Department report criticizing its religious policies, saying it was not based on facts and interfered with the country's internal affairs. The annual US report on the state of religious freedom worldwide, released on Friday, said China's "respect for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience remained poor." China is "strongly dissatisfied and resolutely oppose[s]" the report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said. The report said people who refuse to give up their beliefs can receive harsh punishment, including being sent to prison or being re-educated at labor camps. China was one of eight countries cited for particularly severe violations of religious freedom.
■ Malaysia
Hunting separatists
Authorities have intensified patrols along the country's border with southern Thailand to look for Muslim separatists who may try to sneak in following recent bomb attacks there, a news report said yesterday. Police said they were watching the border zone for Thai separatists suspected of being involved in bombings in the past month -- including blasts in the Thai tourist city of Hat Yai on Saturday -- although there was no intelligence showing they may enter Malaysia. State Police Chief Zulkifli Abdullah Zulkifli said the situation at the border remained calm despite last weekend's attacks.
■ Malaysia
Apology accepted, but ...
Pope Benedict XVI's expression of regret following his remarks on Islam and violence is acceptable, but the pontiff should avoid making future comments that could offend Muslims, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said. "I think we can accept it and we hope there are no more statements that can anger the Muslims," he told Malaysian journalists late on Monday. Abdullah's comments came after he met with US President George W. Bush in New York City. Bush told his visitor that he believed that Benedict was sincere in apologizing following the angry response of Muslims to his speech.
■ India
Bad marriage decision
A man allegedly locked up by his family for 15 years for marrying against their wishes was freed by government officials in the eastern state of Orissa. Narottam Sethi was allegedly confined in a room at Koshala village after he married a tribal girl. Officials sent to Sethi's house reported that despite his long confinement, he appeared to be "normal." Sethi's family, however, said they had locked him up because of insanity. "Narottam was mentally disturbed and kept attacking villagers," a family member was quoted as saying. Sethi was taken to a hospital for medical attention as he was found to be suffering from dehydration and malnutrition.
■ Tonga
Thousands pay respects
His coffin carried aloft by 1,000 pallbearers dressed in grass mats, King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV was buried yesterday in a ceremony combining Christian hymn-singing and ancient Polynesian rituals. The streets of the capital Nuku'alofa were draped in the mourning colors of black and purple as thousands of tearful Tongans gathered to pay their respects to the man who had ruled them for 41 years. Mourners will later feast on pigs roasted in umu, or open pits, dug in the grounds of villages around the nation of 170 coral and volcanic islands before a month of mourning during which dancing and loud music will be banned.
■ Israel
Stray dog exorcized
A stray dog which refused to budge from the home of a recently deceased rabbi has finally moved on after a "redemption ceremony" at a cemetery. The dog, pictured in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Monday, showed up at the house of the late Rabbi Nahman Dubinky. Rabbis with expertise in Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, concluded the animal could be possessed by a tortured soul seeking redemption. Ultra-Orthodox Jews traditionally do not keep dogs as pets. "Sometimes the souls of sinners, such as adulterers or people who slept with non-Jews, enter the body of a dog," Rabbi Yitzhak Basri told Israel Radio.
■ Yemen
Hostage exchange proposed
Mediators have offered to move prisoners for tribesmen who kidnapped four French tourists in exchange for the release of the hostages, a tribal source said on Monday. The proposal was made a day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh joined the efforts to release the tourists, who were seized by tribesmen in the town of Ataq, Shabwa Province, on Sept. 10. It called for the tribesmen "to release their hostages for the transfer to Sanaa of five prisoners held in Abyan Province whom they are seeking to be released, while waiting for the president to deal with their concerns after [today's] elections," the source said.
■ United Kingdom
`Fawlty Towers' relaunched
The hotel that inspired the cult British television comedy series Fawlty Towers is relaunching after a makeover -- but guests will be spared rants by the rudest hotelier of all time. John Cleese was prompted to write the classic 1970s series with his then wife Connie Booth after staying with the cast of Monty Python's Flying Circus at the Gleneagles Hotel in the resort of Torquay. Cleese called hotelier Donald Sinclair "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met." Actress Prunella Scales, who played Basil Fawlty's waspish wife Sybil, was to commemorate the relaunch by unveiling a plaque at the hotel.
■ United Kingdom
Fashion boss pans thin ban
One of the main backers of London Fashion Week on Sunday rejected government calls for a ban on wafer-thin models as the fashion industry faced a furor over its catwalks. "Outright bans and indeed legislation is definitely not a route we want to go down," said Marks and Spencer chief executive Stuart Rose, who is chairman of the British Fashion Council that is organizing the event which started on Monday. He was responding to a plea from British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell for London to follow Madrid's example and ban skinny models.
■ Spain
Gibraltar deals announced
Madrid and London said on Monday they had resolved some of the thorniest issues in the longstanding dispute over Gibraltar, announcing accords on shared access to the airport there and on arrears Britain will pay to Spanish pensioners. The agreements do not, however, address the central question -- Spain's objections to British control of the territory. "We are turning a new page," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said at a news conference in Cordoba. With this "new beginning," he said, Gibraltar might one day "cease to be a permanent irritant."
■ Canada
Students pay respects
Students respectfully made a path through flowers forming a makeshift shrine and entered Dawson College for the first time since a shooting that killed one student and injured 19 others. Hundreds of students -- to the applause of onlookers -- on Monday walked through an entrance where some of the violence occurred last Wednesday. Kimveer Gill, 25, wielding a rapid-fire rifle and two other weapons, went on a shooting rampage on the campus of 10,000 students, killing 18-year-old Anastasia De Souza before taking his own life.
■ Iraq
Baghdad journalist killed
A television correspondent was shot and killed on Monday as he chatted with friends outside a mosque after prayers, the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said. The committee condemned the murder of Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli, 25, who worked for Baghdad TV -- a satellite channel owned by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party -- and was shot by six men in two cars in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. "Journalists in Ramadi report under intolerable conditions without any protection to tell the world what is happening in this hotbed of the Iraqi insurgency," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said.
■ United States
New York battles bed bugs
New York City is experiencing a dramatic resurgence in bedbugs -- those pesky oval insects that hide in the crevices of furniture and feast on human blood at night -- and officials are confounded about how best to respond. Moreover, city officials revealed on Monday that state regulators had failed to publish standards for sanitizing used mattresses and box springs before they can be resold -- even though such standards were supposed to be developed years ago. In the last fiscal year, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development received 4,638 complaints about bedbugs in rental housing.
■ United States
`Straight' men have gay sex
A substantial percentage of men who have homosexual sex still consider themselves "straight," a survey of New York City men suggests. The findings imply that doctors should not rely on a man's self-described sexual orientation in assessing his risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The findings are based on a 2003 health department survey in which respondents were asked about their sexual behavior and their sexual orientation. Almost 4 percent said they were homosexual, while 91 percent described themselves as "straight."
■ Brazil
Lula hit by graft allegations
New corruption allegations and the resignation of a presidential aide have shaken the campaign of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva less than two weeks before the Oct.1 presidential election that most polls say he will win. Federal police on Monday were looking into allegations that Silva's Workers Party agreed to pay 1.7 million reals (US$770,000) for a dossier that would incriminate opposition politician Jose Serra, who is widely favored to win the gubernatorial race in Sao Paulo, Brazil's wealthiest state. Over the weekend, police arrested Sao Paulo lawyer Gedimar Pereira Passos who told investigators he was hired to purchase the dossier by a group of middlemen acting for the Workers Party.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
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