Home explosion kill 20 children
Beijing A cache of explosives at the home of a coal mine manager blew up in a town in northern China, killing at least 20 children at a nearby grade school, news reports said today.
The explosion occurred Wednesday in Kecheng, a town in Shanxi province, one of China’s biggest coal-mining regions, newspapers reported.
“Grade school students who were in class were buried,” the Shanxi Commercial News said. “At least 20 people are dead.”
The mine manager, identified as Lu Maolin, was among the dead and his wife was injured, according to news reports.
Accused terrorist sentenced to jail
Jakarta, , Indonesia The accused leader of an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group was sentenced to 30 months in jail by an Indonesian court today for conspiracy charges related to the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing that killed 202 people, including seven Americans.
Abu Bakar Bashir was cleared of more serious charges that he ordered the bombing, which was aimed at foreign tourists and also killed 88 Australians. He was also cleared of charges related to the 2003 bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 and charges he incited his followers to launch terrorist attacks.
“Neither the defense witnesses nor the prosecutors’ witnesses said that the defendant has planned or provoked other people to commit the bombings,” the court said in its verdict. “The perpetrators of the Marriott bombings admitted they did that on their own will,” it said. “Therefore the defendant has to be acquitted from primary charges.”
The five-judge panel said that Bashir, who has been in jail since April, would get credit for time served and could be freed before the end of 2006.
Native Hawaiians promised recognition
Washington Gov. Linda Lingle and other leading Hawaiians on Tuesday won a promise of prompt Senate action on longstanding legislation to give Native Hawaiians the same rights of self-government enjoyed by American Indians and Native Alaskans.
“This bill is vital to the survival of the Native Hawaiian people, it is vital to providing parity in federal policy for all native peoples in America and it is vital to the continued character of the state of Hawaii,” the Republican governor said in testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
The committee’s chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the panel would vote on the bill next week, giving some impetus to a measure that has stalled in the past three sessions of Congress.
The legislation would recognize the country’s 400,000 Native Hawaiians as an indigenous people and set up a process under which the Native Hawaiian governing entity could negotiate with federal and state governments over land, resources and other assets.
Testimony damaging to Michael Jackson
Santa Maria, Calif. A Las Vegas public relations specialist who briefly worked for Michael Jackson gave damaging testimony against the pop star Wednesday, suggesting his associates arranged a smear campaign against the family who would ultimately accuse him of molestation.
Ann Marie Kite said she was told by a Jackson lawyer that they would portray the mother of a boy as a “crack whore” in the media. Kite was hired to handle Jackson’s crisis management after the airing of a damaging documentary, but she worked for him for only six days and never met the singer.
Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland Ranch in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the boy’s family captive. The charges were sparked by journalist Martin Bashir’s 2003 documentary, “Living With Michael Jackson,” in which the pop star said he let young boys sleep in his bedroom.