■ CHINA
Coal mine fire traps 15
A fire at a coal mine has trapped 15 workers and has been burning since Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency said. Rescuers at the Shanxi Province mine have found three bodies, though 18 people managed to escape, the report yesterday said. "It is not clear whether the 15 trapped miners are still alive or not, and the fire is yet to be quenched," it quoted Wang Xingui, deputy head of the rescue team, as saying. The country's coal industry is the deadliest in the world, with 2,163 miners killed in 1,320 accidents in the first seven months of this year.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Roh mulls walk over border
President Roh Moo-Hyun is considering "walking across" the heavily-fortified border to North Korea for a summit early next month, a report said yesterday. Chosun Ilbo, the largest circulation daily said. However, the idea had sparked concerns about the safety of the head of state. Roh is to visit the North by car via the truce border village of Panmunjeon from Oct. 2 to Oct. 4 for peace talks with the North's leader Kim Jong-il -- only the second inter-Korean summit in the six decades since the peninsula was divided. Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, traveled to the North by air for the first-ever peace summit with Kim in 2000. "Using an overland route for this summit unlike the first one, we're considering showing the president walking across the border line, the symbol of the divided Korea," an unnamed government official told Chosun. The idea, if realized, would allow Roh to drop off his car near the inter-Korean military demarcation line and walk across with his staff, the paper said.
■ INDIA
Man murdered priest
A Hindu man serving a life sentence for burning alive an Australian Christian missionary and his two sons was given another jail term on Saturday for murdering a Catholic priest. Dara Singh is serving a life term in Orissa state for the January 1999 killings of Graham Staines and his two sons, aged eight and 10. On Saturday, a court handed Singh and three others life terms for battering to death 35-year-old Arul Doss, a priest, in September 1999, a court official said. Seventeen others suspected of involvement in the hate crime were set free for lack of evidence, the official said.
■ MALAYSIA
Fees proposed for drivers
Authorities in the nation's biggest city plan to impose a fee on motorists as part of efforts to reduce traffic congestion in downtown areas, a report said yesterday. Two million vehicles ply Kuala Lumpur's streets daily and the city has recorded traffic growth of 10 percent to 15 percent each year, Mayor Abdul Hakim Borhan was quoted by national news agency Bernama as saying on a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. Under the system, vehicles will have their license plates recorded when they enter certain streets, and owners will be required to pay the fee at a bank or convenience store. Drivers who don't pay will be fined, the report said.
■ CHINA
Checks of US hides intensify
Inspectors in the northeast have stepped up checks on cattle hides imported from the US after finding live flies in six shipments, state media said yesterday. The move appeared to be part of Beijing's efforts to show that products from other countries also have quality problems after facing months of international scrutiny about the standards of its own exports. Inspectors in the port city of Dalian found cheese flies in containers of cattle hides between July 30 and Sept. 6, the Xinhua news agency said, citing local officials. No other details were given about the shipments. Cheese fly larva are usually found in moldy cheese or putrid meat. If ingested by humans, they can live for a period in the intestines and can cause diarrhea and vomiting.
■ AUSTRALIA
Al Gore urges careful voting
The political opposition's promise to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions should be the deciding issue in federal elections this year, former US vice president Al Gore said on Saturday. Canberra joined Washington in refusing to accept carbon emission reduction targets set at the 1997 UN climate meeting in Kyoto, Japan. The opposition Labor Party has vowed to ratify the protocol if it wins elections due by Jan. 19. Gore told Sky News television that global warming is ``the most important issue in the world. And I would say [Australians] ought to look very carefully at the fact that one candidate's for ratifying Kyoto and the other is not."
■ BANGLADESH
Storm sinks 12 trawlers
At least 97 fishermen aboard a dozen trawlers were feared drowned in rough seas on Saturday as a storm brewed off the southern coast, officials and witnesses said. Fishermen returning to shore reported seeing at least 12 trawlers sink at sea, local official Selim Khan said in Barisal, 175km south of the capital, Dhaka. At least 50 of the fishermen were rescued by passing boats, while about 97 others were feared drowned, he said. Coast guard patrol boats, meanwhile, were searching for the missing boats and crew, Captain Abidur Rahman said.
■ GREECE
Earthquake shakes island
A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 shook the Aegean Sea island of Karpathos but no damage or injuries were reported, authorities said yesterday. The Athens Geodynamic Institute said the early morning quake occurred in the sea off Karpathos in the Dodecanese island group, some 430km southeast of Athens. The country is one of the world's most earthquake-prone areas. Another two strong quakes struck the west of the country last month, but no injuries or damage were reported.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Bluetongue case discovered
Bluetongue, a virus affecting cows and other ruminant animals, has been detected for the first time, the government said. A cow was infected with the disease on a farm near Ipswich, 110km northeast of London, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement on Saturday. "This is not a confirmed outbreak unless further investigation demonstrates that disease is circulating," the environment agency said in a statement. The discovery comes as the country is trying to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
■ UNITED STATES
Man charged in iguana theft
A man has been charged with stealing three endangered iguanas from a nature preserve in Fiji and smuggling then into the country in his prosthetic leg. Jereme James, 33, faces a single count of smuggling, according to a federal indictment returned on Friday in Los Angeles, California. The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Prosecutors say he stole the Fiji Island banded iguanas while visiting the South Pacific island in September 2002. He then brought the reptiles into the country by hiding them in a special compartment he had constructed in his prosthetic leg, prosecutors said.
■ UNITED STATES
Man allegedly tasered
Four police officers are under investigation in Ocala, Florida, after a man accused them of using a Taser on him three times when he would not take his hand off a Koran under his shirt, a police spokesman said. Jeffrey Shields, 49, filed the complaint with the police, police spokesman Lou Biondi said on Friday. Shields said he did not want to raise his hand because he did not want to drop the Koran, but officers said they couldn't tell what he was holding. Officers were dispatched after receiving tips that an armed man was stashing drugs in a book, Biondi said. Neither drugs nor a gun were found.
■ UNITED STATES
Student arrested for `art'
A 19-year-old US college student was arrested on Friday after she walked into Boston's Logan International Airport wearing what authorities initially thought was an explosive device, police said. Star Simpson, a sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told police that the device -- a circuit board measuring roughly 5cm by 15cm, with protruding wires, lights and a nine-volt battery -- was an art project. "It was an innocuous device," Major Scott Pare of the Massachusetts State Police said at a press conference. Authorities said she would be charged with possession of a hoax device and disorderly conduct.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS