China :: World

ISTANBUL: A new Turkish film in which an action-man hero avenges the death of Turkish activists in Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship is likely to put new strain on already tense relations between Turkey and Israel. "Valley of the Wolves: Palestine," one of the most expensive Turkish films ever made, has drawn accusations at home of excessive violence and abroad of anti-Israeli propaganda, but it attracted big audiences at its opening this weekend. In the film, Polat Alemdar, a secret agent more akin to Rambo than James Bond, emerges from a series of bloody clashes to track down and kill the Israeli commander who ordered the storming of an aid ship heading for Gaza. It starts with a depiction of the real-life incident last May when Israeli marines boarded the Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla organized by a Turkish Islamic charity, and killed nine Turkish activists who tried to stop them, creating a crisis between the former allies. In the film, an Isr...

China issued a travel alert for Egypt on Sunday after at least 600 Chinese people were stranded in the African country as the security situation worsened on the sixth day of widespread anti-government protests. China's embassy in Cairo said on Sunday that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs raised its travel advisory at 2:30 pm, advising people to postpone travel to Egypt. It is the second travel warning the ministry issued on Sunday and the third since Saturday. The ministry said that there were no reports of Chinese casualties. The embassy said on its website on Sunday that it provided assistance to more than 500 people from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan stranded at Cairo airport and dispatched food and water to more than 300 citizens there. It also helped more than 100 Chinese people at Cairo railway station find accommodation in local hotels. Two Chinese travelers were robbed on Saturday in the chaos, the embassy said. The National Tourism Administration also said Chi...

ROME: Milan judges have questioned a 25-year-old woman accused of helping to recruit underage girls to attend Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's parties, ANSA news agency said. The judges on Sunday summoned Nicole Minetti as part of a probe into the prime minister's alleged dalliances with under-age prostitutes. Originally scheduled for Tuesday, they brought forward the session to allow Minetti to escape excessive media attention, ANSA reported, citing her lawyer Daria Pesce. The session lasted two hours, the agency added. The Milan investigation was sparked by allegations that the prime minister paid to have sex with an underage girl known as Ruby, real name Karima El Mahroug. Both she and Berlusconi have denied the allegations. When Ruby was arrested last May for alleged theft, Berlusconi is said to have put pressure on police in Milan to release her and place the Moroccan disco dancer in Minetti's custody. Minetti, a former dental assistant who became a re...

KANO: Clashes between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria last week have left 35 people dead, police said on Sunday, as fresh violence flared up in the flashpoint city of Jos. The incidents were the latest in a cycle of violence in volatile central Nigeria, where religious rioting has killed scores in recent years. "Thirty-five people have been killed in sectarian violence in Tafawa Balewa on Thursday," Bauchi police commissioner Abdulkadir Mohammed Indabawa, said. Only last week police had reported riots that had killed four people and arson attacks that had destroyed five mosques and 50 houses. In neighbouring Plateau state's capital of Jos meanwhile, more than a dozen people had died after clashes sparked by the stabbing Friday of university students by Muslim villagers, Muslim and Christian community leaders said. Churches, mosques, filling stations, houses and food kiosks were set ablaze over the weekend. On Sunday the military sent in reinforcements aid...

A COURT in Russia's far northern region of Arkhangelsk is hearing testimony from six men accused of hijacking the Arctic Sea, a cargo ship, in 2009, the bizarre disappearance of which prompted international speculation about a secret Russian arms sale to the Middle East gone awry. The defendants, who face up to 15 years in jail on charges of kidnapping and piracy, have pleaded guilty, although five of them dispute details of the indictment. But the circumstances surrounding their case are so murky, and the official version so implausible, that their relatives are convinced they were duped into covering up something the Russian government wants to remain secret. The Russian navy says the ship was carrying timber from Finland to Algeria when it was hijacked by six armed pirates, most of them unemployed ethnic Russians living in an impoverished neighbourhood of the Estonian capital, Tallinn. The disappearance triggered an international search on the high seas until Moscow claimed it h...

Hundreds of churchgoers filled historic church on Sunday to pray for former president after his release from hospital Hundreds of South Africans filled a historic church Sunday morning to pray for former president Nelson Mandela after his release from a local hospital earlier this week. Rev. Benedict Mahlangu, a priest at the main Roman Catholic church in the black township of Soweto, lit a candle and asked congregants to pray for Mandela, who doctors said was treated for an acute respiratory tract infection. More than 500 people gathered at Regina Mundi church, a former center of anti-apartheid protests and funerals. Bullet holes in the ceiling serve as reminders of a 1976 incident when police stormed the church during an anti-apartheid protest and fired live ammunition at students. Mahlangu said his parishioners showed great concern during Mandela's two-night hospital stay. "Around here, there was no life, everything just stopped," Mahlangu said. "They were just as...

Official preliminary results of independence vote shows nearly 99% support for break up of Africa's largest country Nearly 99% of southern Sudanese voters chose secession in this month's independence referendum, clearing the way for Sudan to split in two. The official preliminary results were announced at a ceremony attended by a crowd of several thousand people in the southern capital Juba today. The figures showed that voter turnout was 98% far above the 60% threshold required for the result to be valid. Subject to confirmation of the final result next month, and pending legal challenges, southern Sudan will be free to declare independence on 9 July. "This is what we voted for, so that people can be free in their own country ... I say congratulations a million times," southern Sudan's president Salva Kiir told the crowd, who had assembled at the grave of the liberation leader John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash in 2005. The ceremony ended with the peop...