■CHINA
Quake rattles Sichuan
A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit the southwest on Friday, the US Geological Survey said, close to the area devastated by a massive tremor in May that left nearly 70,000 dead. State media quoted local officials as saying that 231 people were hurt in the quake, which struck 65km north of Mianyang, an area that was severely hit by the 8.0-magnitude quake on May 12. The tremor, which hit at 4:32pm, struck not far from an area hit by three quakes one week ago that killed one person and injured 17.
■PHILIPPINES
Village chieftain killed
A village chieftain and his companion were killed by three suspected communist rebels in an eastern city, a police report said yesterday. Manolo Basilan and companion Jessie Briones were riding a motorcycle when the gunmen fired at them on Friday in Herrera village in Ligao City in Albay Province, 315km southeast of Manila. Basilan, president of the village chieftains association in Ligao City, and Briones died on the spot from gunshot wounds.
■CAMBODIA
Government seeks FBI help
The government will seek help from the FBI in trying to solve the murder of a journalist affiliated with the opposition party and his son, an official said yesterday. The government has contacted the FBI office in the capital, Phnom Penh, and plans to send a formal request for assistance tomorrow, Ministry of Interior Spokesman Lieutenant General Khieu Sopheak said. He said the FBI could help in arresting the culprits. Khem Sambo, 47, and his 21-year-old son were gunned down in a drive-by shooting on July 11. The reporter covered corruption and other social ills for the opposition newspaper Moneaseka Khmer.
■INDIA
Train fire kills 32 people
At least 32 people died when a fire believed to have been sparked by a short-circuit spread through a train early on Friday while many passengers were asleep, the government and police said. Five coaches of the Gautami Express, which was traveling from Hyderabad, capital of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, to Kakinada on the coast, were gutted in the massive pre-dawn fire, the country’s railway ministry said. Television pictures showed a carriage with its exterior paint scorched off from the heat with flames glowing through the windows in the pre-dawn darkness. Bars covered the glassless windows, as is common in standard coaches. Railway officials have ruled out sabotage and said the fire was apparently caused by a short-circuit.
■MYANMAR
Comedian faces prison
A famous comedian and three other activists who helped deliver relief supplies to cyclone victims could be imprisoned for two years on charges of causing public unrest, his lawyer said yesterday. Comedian Zarganar and the others appeared in court inside Insein prison on Wednesday, attorney Aung Thein said. They included a sports writer identified as Zaw Thet Htwe and Thant Zin Aung. Aung Thein said he has not met his clients and was unable to confirm the charges. But he believes they will be accused of breaking a law that makes it illegal for “anyone to circulate a statement or rumor with intent to cause alarm to the public.”
■SOUTH KOREA
Business uses patriotism
A furious dispute with Japan over who owns a desolate cluster of rocks has turned into a marketing opportunity for businesses tapping into patriotic fervor. One bank has set up a popular “cyber branch” in the tiny Dokdo islands — called Takeshima in Japanese — which lie about halfway across the sea to Japan. Mobile phone companies have joined in. Some have ringtones based on a song eulogizing local rule over the islands. And one is offering a “Dokdo is our territory” call plan that lets subscribers donate to a campaign to promote the islands internationally as South Korean territory.
■VIETNAM
US citizen extradited
A US citizen of Vietnamese origin, wanted by the FBI on charges he sexually abused his daughter, has been arrested and deported from the country after being in hiding for more than three years. The FBI notified police in March that Dang Van Viet, 44, from Waldorf, Maryland, was wanted for allegedly sexually abusing his daughter for nearly 10 years, the Public Security Ministry-run People’s Police newspaper reported yesterday. Tracking Viet’s record, police investigators found that he returned to the country in January 2005 and lived in Ho Chi Minh City before buying a house in Can Tho city in the Mekong Delta, the paper said.
■THAILAND
Three killed in south
Three people including one separatist militant were shot dead in attacks across the restive south, police said yesterday. A 29-year-old Muslim teacher was killed on his way to work yesterday morning in a drive-by shooting by two militants, Yala Province police said. In Pattani Province, a 28-year-old militant was killed after a ten-minute shoot-out at a Muslim school on Friday evening between rebels and about 200 soldiers and police officers who had been searching the building. On Friday in Narathiwat Province, a 25-year-old Muslim man was shot dead in front of his house by unknown gunmen, police said.
■GREECE
Aussie killed outside club
Doctors declared a 20-year-old Australian man dead on Friday, three days after a brutal beating on Mykonos that prompted the government to target rising crime at resorts. Doujon Zammit from Sydney was confirmed dead at 1:30pm, doctors at the Errikos Dynan hospital in Athens said in a statement. Zammit had traveled with friends to the popular Aegean island on holiday. “After his parents were informed, they decided to donate his heart to an Australian citizen hospitalized at the Onassis [heart] Hospital,” the statement said. Police detained four nightclub employees after Zammit was beaten with a metal bar outside a club on Mykonos. One of the suspects testified that he believed Zammit had stolen a handbag inside the club, police officials said.
■TURKEY
Dorm death toll rises
The number of dead in the dormitory collapse rose to 18 when the body of another schoolgirl was pulled from the rubble of the building early yesterday morning. Local media said that rescue workers had already ceased operations, but began again when a family reported that one of their daughters was still missing. In addition to the dead, 27 girls were injured when the three-story dormitory building in the Taskent region of Konya collapsed early on Friday morning. A gas cannister explosion was the mostly likely reason for he collapse, said Mehmet Demirgul, the mayor of the nearby town of Balcilar. Around 60 girls between the ages of eight and 16 were staying at the dormitory while attending summer Koran courses.
■NIGERIA
Mob attacks workers
An angry mob attacked workers from the country’s biggest construction firm in the capital Abuja on Friday after one of its trucks crashed into a commuter bus, killing at least 12 people, police and witnesses said. The articulated truck, carrying a shipping container converted into a passenger compartment, was taking workers from Julius Berger to an Abuja suburb when it crashed into the minibus. “So far, 12 people have been confirmed dead, while 16 others sustained various degrees of injury,” Charles Akpabio, Abuja sector commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps, told reporters. The rush-hour crash attracted a crowd who blamed the company for the deaths. They hurled stones to chase away Julius Berger employees who came to retrieve the damaged vehicle, before setting it on fire. The country’s roads are among the world’s deadliest because of large potholes, poorly maintained vehicles and dangerous driving.
■GAZA
Tunnel collapse kills four
Four Palestinians were killed and 14 wounded on Friday when a tunnel under the border between the southern town of Rafah and Egypt collapsed, medics and witnesses said. Witnesses said that several Palestinians were digging a tunnel east of Rafah town under the border between Gaza Strip and Egypt, adding that the tunnel had suddenly collapsed while around 20 people were into it. Mo’aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency in the Palestinian Ministry of Health, told reporters that Gaza hospitals received the bodies of four people, adding that 14 others wounded. More than 10 Palestinians have been killed in the past few months in tunnels designed to smuggle goods into the enclave. Tunneling business in the Gaza Strip increased after Israel imposed a tight blockade on the area after the Islamic Hamas movement routed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ security forces and took control of the enclave last year.
■MEXICO
Mother flushes son in toilet
Police have arrested a woman for allegedly flushing her newborn baby down the toilet, killing the boy. Police say they found the baby’s body in a sewage pumping station in the western city of Guadalajara on Tuesday. Suspicion focused on 27-year-old Rita Maria Pena after local residents reported that her pregnancy had ended, but she appeared not to have the child. Prosecutors say Pena acknowledged when questioned that she had thrown the baby into a toilet after giving birth. In a Friday statement, prosecutors quoted Pena as saying she was upset because the pregnancy had ruined her relationship with a new boyfriend.
■MEXICO
Border crossings deadly
A total of 290 Mexicans have died trying to cross the border into the US in the first half of this year, a lawmaker in the Chamber of Deputies said. The number compared to 520 Mexicans who died in the whole of last year as they sought to cross the border into the US, said Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, secretary of the committee on population, border and immigration affairs. “There is an increase in deaths of Mexicans on the northern border,” he said, adding it was a trend over six years. With about 325,000 people trying to emigrate to US territory each year, “every minute a Mexican abandons his community and every minute a family disintegrates,” he said.
■UNITED STATES
Cat’s meow saves woman
A 97-year-old woman said her cat’s early morning yowling saved her from a house fire. Grace George, of Independence, Missouri, said her cat Boo Boo’s yowling from an open bedroom window early Wednesday woke her up from a sound sleep. “I got so aggravated,” George said. “I didn’t know why she was doing that.” George picked up the black and gold brindle, a stray she had taken in about 15 years earlier, and felt her way through the dark house until she reached the kitchen. It was just 4am and she wanted more sleep. So she started to put the cat outside. Then she smelled smoke.
■UNITED STATES
Police deny abductor seen
Boston police dismissed several witness reports on Friday that a high-society man who allegedly abducted his seven-year-old daughter was spotted in the Caribbean the day before. Employees at an auto store and at a convenience store said they recognized Clark Rockefeller and his daughter, Reigh Boss, from photos as the people they helped the day before, Turks and Caicos Sergeant Calvin Chase said on Friday. But the sightings were investigated and found not to be credible, Boston Police spokesman Eddy Chrispin said. “It definitely was not him,” Chrispin said.
■COLOMBIA
Miners killed in blast
A methane gas explosion killed eight miners and wounded two on Friday in an illegally operated coal mine in the central part of the country, authorities said. The explosion happened in a mine in Cundinamarca Province that the government shut down in 2004, said Plinio Bustamante, director of Mining Services at the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining. “The mine generated two explosions that resulted in eight miners being killed,” Bustamante said. It was the worst accident of its kind this year in the Andean country, where thousands of impoverished people work in improvised mines subject to landslides, gas explosions and other hazards.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
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