Hong Kong activists stopped from sailing to disputed islands
Hong Kong - A group of Hong Kong activists backing China's claim to disputed islands in the East China Sea was back on dry land Thursday after a bid to sail to the contested waters was halted by marine police.
Boats from the Hong Kong Marine Department surrounded the vessel minutes before it sailed out of Hong Kong waters Wednesday night.
Officers boarded the boat and ordered the crew to turn back. The vessel was then escorted back to the Marine Department headquarters in Hong Kong, a government spokesman said.
The seven activists set sail Wednesday afternoon amid growing tensions between China and Japan after the arrest last week of a Chinese fishing boat captain by the Japan Coast Guard.
Japan accused him of colliding September 7 with two of its patrol boats near the disputed islands north-east of Taiwan, which are known as Senkaku in Japan, Diaoyu in China and Tiaoyutai in Taiwan. The uninhabited islands, together with the oil-rich surrounding area, are claimed by all three governments.
The Hong Kong group claimed its 10-day mission was to show that the Chinese had the right to fish in the disputed waters and said they would only be fishing there.
However, the Marine Department issued a written warning saying their vessel was not authorized to carry passengers and those on board were not fishing crew.
Nationalist protesters in Hong Kong have sailed to the islands before to back China's claim to them. In 1996, a Hong Kong activist died when he fell from a boat near the islands.
Vietnamese police bust ring trafficking women to Singapore
Hanoi - Police in Vietnam arrested four alleged members of an international human-trafficking ring and freed six women they were escorting to Singapore, a police official said Thursday.
The suspected traffickers were arrested Sunday at Ho Chi Minh City airport as they were helping the women to check in for a flight to Singapore, said Nguyen Hong Sang, a senior police official in the women's home province of Tay Ninh.
Sang said the women had been recruited in Tay Ninh with the promise that they would be picked up in Singapore by a Vietnamese woman who had arranged jobs for them in shops or restaurants. In fact, they were being sold to brothels, Sang said.
Those arrested were two women - Nguyen Loan Thach, 26, and Nguyen Thi Tuyet Nhung, 28 - and two men - Luu Huu Loi, 26, and Tran Van Tam, 36.
Police also seized 30 passports, 11 airline tickets and more than 20,000 dollars.
Sang said police had investigated the case based on information from three women who had been trafficked to Singapore but escaped to Vietnam and complained to police in April.
The suspected traffickers declared they had been paid 2.5 million dong (132 dollars) for each woman, but Sang said the price must have been higher.
Vietnamese police are working with Singapore authorities to identify the Vietnamese trafficker in Singapore.
According to police statistics, at least 6,684 Vietnamese women and children had been trafficked abroad from 2005 to June.
Survey shows Apple customers are happiest
San Francisco - The cult of Apple is alive and well, with customers who bought the company's computers reporting higher levels of satisfaction than those of any other PC manufacturers, according to a consumer survey issued Tuesday.
The survey, by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, found that Apple scored 86 out of a possible 100 points on the consumer satisfaction index, two points higher than last year and nine points higher than its nearest PC competitor. It was the seventh straight year that Apple led all other PC makers.
Dell, HP and Acer brand computers all tied with 77 points, slightly higher than smaller PC makers such as Sony and Toshiba.
However all the major PC makers posted satisfaction gains of between 3 and 4 per cent, largely due to the impressive debut of the Windows 7 operating system, which has succeeded in wiping out the frustration many users felt at Windows Vista, said Claes Fornell, the founder of ACSI.
"Windows-based PC brands appear to have recovered from the problems associated with the Windows Vista software," said Fornell in a press release. "Barely a year into the release of Windows 7, satisfaction with these brands has returned to, and in some cases even surpassed, the levels prior to the launch of Vista."
Home electronics devices, including TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, saw customer satisfaction rise to 85 points, the survey found. The overall customer satisfaction with personal computers and big-ticket consumer electronics such as televisions is "at or near all-time highs" with 78 points out of 100, the survey found.
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