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

 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.

Hong Kong activists set sail for islands in China-Japan dispute
Posted : Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:37:40 GMT
By : dpa 
Category : Asia (World) 
Hong Kong - A group of Hong Kong activists backing China's claim to the contested Diaoyu islands tried to set sail for the disputed waters Wednesday amid rising Sino-Japanese tensions.

However, it was unclear if the voyage would succeed as marine officials and police tried to dissuade the activists from taking their fishing boat out of Hong Kong waters.

The seven activists set out Wednesday afternoon tailed by a vessel from the Hong Kong Marine Department which issued them with a written warning saying their vessel was not authorized to carry passengers.

A marine police launch also went out to the ageing fishing boat, which is flying a Hong Kong flag, and told the crew they were not authorized to set sail on their 10-day mission.

One of the activists, Lo Chau, told reporters: "We are only going there to fish, to prove that the Chinese have the right to fish in those waters. They are Chinese waters so what we are doing is legal."

Lo insisted all the activists were fishermen. He said the boat was carrying a month's worth of provisions and would return to Hong Kong after bringing in "an adequate catch".

However, their presence near the island chain will only heighten tensions between China and Japan following the arrest last week of a Chinese fishermen by Japanese coast guards last week.

Nationalist protesters in Hong Kong have sailed to the island chain before to back China's claim to the islands. In 1996, a Hong Kong activist died when he fell from a boat near the islands.

The uninhabited Diaoyu islands, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan, are north-east of Taiwan and are claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan.

The islands are situated 186 km north east of Taiwan and 170 km north of Japan's Ishigaki island, and have great strategic importance attached to them by both China and Japan.

Floods leave 18 dead, 48 missing as typhoon hits China - Summary
Posted : Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:33:52 GMT
By : dpa 
Category : Asia (World) 
Beijing - Floods left at least 18 people dead and 48 missing after Typhoon Fanapi brought torrential rain to southern China's Guangdong province, state media said on Wednesday.

Provincial officials said the typhoon had brought the heaviest rain in 100 years to some parts of Guangdong, causing several flash floods and landslides on Tuesday.

More than 1 million people in Guangdong were affected by Wednesday, with 83,000 evacuated and about 9,000 buildings damaged or destroyed, the provincial Civil Affairs Bureau reported.

At least five people died and six were missing after a dam collapsed near a tin mine on Guangdong's Qianbai township, the official Xinhua news agency quoted local officials as saying.

Floods and landslides destroyed 346 houses in nearby Xinyi city, the agency said.

Three other people died and eight were missing in Guangdong's Yangchun city, where authorities evacuated some 19,000 people.

One area of Yangchun recorded 548.5 millimetres of rain in seven hours on Tuesday, its highest for 58 years, the agency said.

State media showed photographs of local residents wading through waist-deep water in the streets of a suburb of Yangchun.

The Guangdong Civil Affairs bureau estimated direct economic losses at 867 million yuan (129 million dollars) by Wednesday.

Government relief agencies planned to send thousands of tents plus bedding, clothes, food, water and medical supplies to help those left homeless by the floods, reports said.

Typhoon Fanapi was the 11th and strongest typhoon to hit China this year.

It made landfall in Fujian province, bordering Guangdong, after leaving at least two dead and more than 100 injured in Taiwan Sunday.

Japan calls for talks over detained Chinese fisherman
Posted : Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:28:31 GMT
By : dpa 
Category : Asia (World) 

Tokyo - Japan hoped to hold talks with Beijing to defuse an escalating row over a Chinese fisherman detained near disputed islands, a government official said Wednesday.

China has repeatedly called for the release of the boat captain arrested two weeks ago, while Tokyo was pressing charges against him for allegedly obstructing the Japanese Coast Guard in its duties.

The two governments "should hold a high-level meeting, if possible, urgently," Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku was quoted as saying by news reports.

Late Tuesday in New York, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated a demand for the "immediate and unconditional" release of the 41-year-old fisherman.

He was accused by Tokyo of deliberately colliding with Japanese Coast Guard vessels on September 7 off the islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

The islands, together with the oil-rich surrounding area, are claimed by both governments as well as by Taiwan.

China has called the proceedings against the suspect "illegal," but Japan has insisted it is strictly following its laws.

Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, like Wen in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, said Tuesday he hoped to explain Tokyo's handling of the case to the Chinese representatives if he had the chance.

"China is an important neighbouring country. We will have to firmly build a strategic reciprocal relationship," he told reporters.
 

Taxi driver sentenced to death for killing mother, child

Bangkok - A Bangkok court on Tuesday sentenced a taxi driver to death for the murder of a woman and her 5-year-old son whose body he allegedly chopped up and threw away in garbage bags.

French, German leaders say Roma row was misunderstanding

 New York - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has cleared up a misunderstanding over what German Chancellor Angela Merkelsaid about illegal Roma settlements in Germany, German officials said Tuesday.

Sarkozy had said last week that Merkel told him she, like him, was planning to clear illegal Roma settlements, but the German government denied she made such a statement.

The president made the statement when he came under fire at an EU summit in Brussels over France's deportation this year of more than than 8,300 Romanians and Bulgarians, most of them Roma, or Gypsies.

He met Merkel Monday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's special session on the Millennium Development Goals in New York, and cleared up the misunderstanding, the officials said.

They did not say whether Sarkozy apologized to Merkel, but said the matter that had threatened to turn into a diplomatic dispute had now been forgotten.

The two leaders spent one minute on the topic during their friendly conversation in New York, and another 20 on Franco-German cooperation in the context of the G8 and G20 group of countries, the officials said.

Both Sarkozy and Merkel were said to have expressed surprise that the incident had been reported by the media as damaging to bilateral relations.

The officials did not explain how the misunderstanding came about. There are no reported camps of Roma immigrants in Germany.