8 theSun | THURSDAY JULY 16 2009

news without borders

China warns citizens in Algeria of Al Qaeda threat

BEIJING: China has warned its citizens
in Algeria about possible attacks from
Al Qaeda in retribution for a Chinese
government crackdown in the Muslim
region of Xinjiang.
The Chinese embassy in Algeria on
its website urged all Chinese people
and organisations to be more aware of
safety precautions and to strengthen
security measures “in consideration of
the situation after the July 5 incident
in Urumqi”.
The warning came after London
risk consultancy Stirling Assynt said in
a report to clients that Al Qaeda might
target Chinese workers in northwest
Africa, citing “chatter” after the July
5 ethnic riots in Urumqi, capital of
Xinjiang.
“China has been reminding over-
seas Chinese to pay attention to their
safety and enhance self protection ...
China will take any necessary meas-
ure to protect the safety of Chinese
organisations and citizens overseas,”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang
told reporters on Tuesday when asked
to comment on the report.
Security is heavy in Uighur neigh-
bourhoods of Urumqi and other cities
in Xinjiang after ethnic riots killed
184 people and wounded more than
1,600. About 1,000 people have been
detained. Two knife-wielding Uighurs
were also shot dead by police this week
when they attacked another Uighur.
Exiled Uighur organisations said
they opposed all forms of violence and
condemned the reported Al Qaeda
threat.
The Uighur American Association
and the World Uighur Congress are
“extremely disturbed by reports that
the North African wing of Al Qaeda has
threatened to attack Chinese workers
in Africa in revenge for the deaths of
Uighurs in East Turkestan”, the exiled
groups said in a statement.
They said they advocated basic hu-
man rights and self-determination for
Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely
Muslim and share linguistic and cultural
bonds with Central Asia and who now
make up less than half the region’s
population of 20 million. Chinese work-
ers have been kidnapped, and Chinese
convoys attacked, over the past few
years in many parts of the world with
heavy Chinese investment, including
Pakistan and Niger. – Reuters

Deadly violence
dumping a newborn baby in
a rubbish bin in a Hongkong
briefs supermarket. Tsui Chi-lam
claimed he thought the pre-
maturely-born baby was dead
Authorities seize after a woman gave birth
nearly one tonne unexpectedly in the bathroom

flares in Swat valley

of heroin
BANGKOK: Myanmar authorities
intercepted nearly one tonne
of heroin in Shan state, one of
the biggest drug busts in recent
history, Thai media reports said
yesterday. The massive seizure,
netting 950kg of heroin and
340,000 methamphetamine
pills, was made on Monday in
Tachilek, in north-eastern Myan-
mar, the Bangkok Post reported,
citing Thai narcotics suppression
officers who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
Thai sources said that the
heroin was refined in Mong
Hsat, south of Tachilek that is
known to be under the control
of business associates of the
late Khun Sa, former “kingpin”
of the heroin trade in the Golden
Triangle. – dpa
25 hurt as
lightning strikes
football field
VIENNA: A thunderbolt hurt
25 Austrian football players
and spectators when it struck
during a match on Tuesday
evening, the rescue service in
the town of Leoben said.
The local practice game
ended abruptly as people
were thrown to the ground
by the lightning’s shock wave
or were hurt by the electrical
field. No one was directly
struck, so there were no seri-
ous injuries, Red Cross official
Martin Holler said. Most of
of his clinic in November last
year.
The 67-year-old wrapped
the baby girl with her umbili-
cal cord still attached in news-
papers and plastic bags and
dumped her in the bin at a su-
permarket. But the baby was
still alive and was discovered
by a supermarket worker who
saw something moving inside
the plastic bags. – dpa
British backpacker
beats Australia’s
bush
SYDNEY: A British teenager
given up for dead after getting
lost in dense forest in Australia
12 days ago was found alive
yesterday just 15km from where
he went missing.
Helicopters, tracker dogs
and a search party of 60 people
had been scouring the Blue
Mountains for 19-year-old Jamie
Neale. He disappeared on July 3
after leaving his Katoomba youth
hostel to go on a popular and
well-signposted tourist walk.
Bushwalkers spotted Neale
in rugged terrain and alerted the
search party. He was airlifted to
hospital where he is recovering
from exposure. – dpa
Powerful quake off
New Zealand sparks
tsunami alert
WELLINGTON: A powerful 7.8-
magnitude earthquake struck
off the southwest coast of
PESHAWAR: Pakistani troops
have killed six militants in the Swat
valley, where the government has
started bussing home thousands of
those displaced by a military offen-
sive, officials said yesterday.
Taliban Officials say the pace of re-
fighters turns to the northwest district has
at an quickened in recent days although
undisclosed
location near
many civilians are fearful about
security after two months of fierce
Afghanistan. fighting between government
troops and Taliban militants. “Six
militants were killed when troops
retaliated and returned fire after a
rebel attack on an army checkpost
in Kabal town on Tuesday night,”
said a military official.
A senior police official in Swat
confirmed the incident and said
there were no army losses.
On Tuesday, the military re-
ported killings in Swat for the first
time in days, announcing that nine
REUTERSPIX
militants were shot dead in the last
24 hours.
Pakistan says more than
1,700 militants and around 160
security personnel were killed in
operations to crush the Taliban in
northwest districts since late April,
but the death tolls are impossible
to verify independently.
The army launched a massive
offensive under heavy US pressure
in late April in Buner and Lower
Dir, before focusing the fight
on militants in Swat, where the
Taliban concentrated a two-year
rebellion to enforce syariah law.
Last week, Prime Minister You-
suf Raza Gilani unveiled plans to
start sending home the nearly two
million people displaced by the
conflict and said the military had
“eliminated” the extremists.
Elsewhere in North West Fron-
tier Province, two policemen were
killed and five wounded in a bomb
explosion in the town of Bannu.
“A police vehicle hit a remote-
controlled improvised explosive
device, which was planted along-
side the road, killing two police-
men and wounding five,” said
local police official Iqbal Marwat.
Islamist militants bitterly
opposed to the government’s al-
liance with the United States,
whose troops are fighting a
Taliban insurgency in neighbour-
ing Afghanistan, carry out daily

the casualties were players New Zealand yesterday, seis-

training at the local police
football club in the town in
Styria province. – dpa
Honduran minister
who insulted
Obama quits
TEGUCIGALPA: The Honduran
minister who called US President
Barack Obama “that little black
guy” quit the country’s post-coup
interim government on Tuesday,
citing US Embassy “pressures.”
A US embassy spokeswoman
denied the United States was
exerting any pressure, saying
the embassy had no contact
with a government it did not
recognise.
Enrique Ortez’s resignation
comes just days after he was
moved from the post of foreign
minister to minister of govern-
ment and justice in the wake
of his comment about Obama.
– Reuters
Man jailed
for dumping
newborn baby
HONGKONG: A Chinese
medicine practitioner was
yesterday jailed five years for
mologists said, prompting a
brief tsunami warning but no
casualties or major damage.
The epicentre of the under-
sea quake was located 160km
west of the city of Invercargill,
on South Island, at a depth of
about 35km. It struck at 0922
GMT (5.22pm in Malaysia).
The Hawaii-based Pacific
Tsunami Warning Centre said
a low-level tsunami was gener-
ated near the epicentre, but later
cancelled its warning. – AFP
Israeli soldiers
tell of ‘shoot first’
policy in Gaza
JERUSALEM: Israeli soldiers
in the Gaza war were told to
shoot first and worry about the
consequences later, and used
Palestinian civilians as human
shields, an activist group’s report
said yesterday.
The testimony of some 30
soldiers – all unnamed – shows
that the massive destruction
wreaked on the Palestinian ter-
ritory was “a direct result of IDF
(Israel Defence Forces) policy”,
the Breaking the Silence group,
made up of veteran troops, said
in a report. – AFP
First near-total face transplant patient doing well
PARIS: A woman whose face was shred-
ded by her shotgun-wielding husband is
doing well after undergoing the world’s
first near-total face transplant, doctors
reported on Tuesday.
In a paper published online by The Lan-
cet, American surgeons shed light on the
suffering enduring by 46-year-old mother-
of-two Connie Culp and her gradual re-
covery after the marathon operation last
December.
The 2004 shooting tore away the mid-
dle part of Connie’s face, causing her to
lose her nose, mouth, nerves and skin.
Over the next four years, completely
disfigured, Connie underwent 23 bouts of
reconstructive surgery. But she could not
drink from a cup, she had lost her sense
of smell and found it a torture to be seen
in public.
In December 2008, she tried a last roll
of the dice – a face transplant, an opera-
tion that, she was told, involved serious
complications and lifelong drugs to sup-
press the immune system.
The 22-hour exploit detailed in The Lan-
cet report saw a team of eight surgeons
patiently set in place a new face from a
brain-dead woman donor.
The donor face covered 80% of where
Connie’s face had been, and contained the
nose, upper lip, lower eyelids, the upper
jaw, including incisor teeth, the palate and
various glands.
The first step was to secure the bone
components of the graft, which was fol-
lowed by connecting up the arteries and
veins. Two hours and 40 minutes after
these connections were made, the donor
tissue began to turn pink, confirming the
graft’s viability. The facial nerves were
then connected.
After the operation, Connie began
immunosuppressant drugs, a powerful
treatment that can leave the body ex-
posed to opportunistic infection, and was
given daily physiotherapy, speech therapy
and psychological support.
Since then, there has been only one
brief episode of tissue rejection, which
happened on the 47th day after the op-
eration but was successfully treated with
drugs. Facial sensation began to return
after six months, and muscle recovery
attacks on security forces in the
northwest. – AFP
– shown by the ability to smile, pucker
and pronounce vowels – is “slow but
progressing,” say the doctors.
She still has problems with upper lip
and lower eyelid movements and it is
unclear whether there will be complete
recovery there.
However, key functions that she had
lost for four years have been restored
– the sense of smell, the ability to eat solid
foods, drink from a cup and make intel-
ligible speech. Psychologically, Connie’s
change has been huge.
“Since surgery, she has recovered
self-confidence, and looks forward to
rebuilding her social life and to helping
others who have been similarly disabled
by trauma,” say the authors.
Three months after the operation,
Connie gave herself five out of 10 for her
appearance, but after five months, she
rated herself eight out of 10.
“Our patient is doing remarkably well
and is very pleased with the result,” said
the lead surgeon, Maria Siemionow, a
professor at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
– AFP