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BEIJING: Corruption is a key factor in the frequency of horrific
accidents in China’s notoriously deadly coalmines, the country’s
top workplace safety official said Tuesday. “Graft and trading
power for money still exist among a small number of government
employees,” Li Yizhong, minister of the State Administration of
Work Safety, told reporters when asked to explain the reasons for
the accidents. But the problem is greatly compounded by chaotic
management of mines by their bosses, the presence of flammable gases
in many of China’s mines, and low safety awareness among miners,
he said.
-- AFP
KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian court has sentenced an
Indonesian man to five years in jail for burying his newborn baby
girl alive in a jungle to conceal the birth, a report said Tuesday.
Ramlee Basaruddin, 38, pleaded guilty to unintentional murder after
he buried the infant on January 8 in a shallow grave behind the
house he shared with his girlfriend in southern Johor state. The
girlfriend, a 20-year-old Malaysian, had given birth earlier the
same day. The judge described Ramlee’s act as “cruel” and
“hideous” and handed down the maximum sentence allowed, the New
Straits Times paper reported.
-- AFP
SEOUL: Prosecutors investigating whether South
Korean president-elect Lee Myung-Bak was involved in a 2001 stocks
fraud summoned his former business partner for questioning on
Tuesday. Kim Gyeong Jun, charged with rigging share prices among
other offenses, was brought in handcuffs to the investigating
team’s office in southern Seoul, TV footage showed.
-- AFP
PHNOM PENH: Over 100 people from the Cambodian
Free Trade Union (FTU), garment factories, opposition parties and
NGOs gathered here on Tuesday to commemorate Chea Vichea, former
president of the union. “We would like to call for the authorities
to open new investigation for the killing of Chea Vichea,” said
Chea Mony, younger brother of Chea Vichea and current president of
FTU, at a memorial ceremony. Vichea was shot dead on January 22,
2004, while buying a newspaper in downtown Phnom Penh.
-- Xinhua
BANGKOK: Ten activists have been charged with a
range of offenses after storming Thailand’s parliament last month
to protest the passage of bills by army-appointed lawmakers, police
said Tuesday. Police Major General Jet Mongkonhattee told AFP the 10
were charged with trespassing, assembling with unlawful aims,
unlawful detention and using a loudspeaker without authorization.
-- AFP
AUCKLAND: Sherpas, mountaineers and a grateful
nation mourned Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary at a state
funeral Tuesday, more than half a century after he first stood on
the roof of the world. Thousands of mourners packed the church in
Auckland, lined the streets as his coffin was driven by or watched
on giant screens across New Zealand to pay their last respects to a
man Prime Minister Helen Clark called a colossus. The funeral was
beamed around the world, including Antarctica where Hillary also led
the first expedition to the South Pole by vehicle.
-- AFP
HANOI: Though Vietnam’s information technology
(IT) industry is in dire need of qualified staff, thousands of IT
graduates have yet to find jobs, local newspaper Vietnam News
reported Tuesday. “Old teaching methods, outdated information,
passive students, poor instruction, and unqualified teachers all
have contributed to the current IT staff situation,” the newspaper
quoted Vietnamese deputy minister of Education and Training Banh
Tien Long as saying.
-- Xinhua
NAIROBI: Six people were killed in tribal
clashes in Kenya’s Rift Valley, police said Tuesday, as the
country awaited the arrival of former UN chief Kofi Annan as a
mediator in the deadly political standoff. The latest deaths brought
to at least 63 the number of people killed since Wednesday when
opposition chief Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM)
Party called for nationwide protests over the reelection of
President Mwai Kibaki. The six, including a father and his two sons,
were killed late Monday in the volatile Molo district, where rival
tribes have been clashing in recent weeks, a police commander said.
-- AFP
BAQUBA, Iraq: A suicide bomber blew himself up
at the entrance to a school in the restive city of Baquba on
Tuesday, wounding 21 people as the blast ripped through a crowd of
teachers and pupils, police said. “Four female teachers and 17
pupils were wounded, including five very young boys,” said police
Major Ahmed al-Karkhi. The attacker targeted Al-Mutwra school in the
middle of Baquba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of Baghdad, as
pupils were arriving for morning classes, Karkhi said.
-- AFP
MOSCOW: Russia may retaliate after the Latvian
authorities declared a Russian Embassy staff in Riga persona non-grata.
“We have been analyzing the situation in respect to this
unfriendly step and reserve the right to take adequate measures,”
Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a
statement on Tuesday.
-- Xinhua
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