Beijing: 2,400 Internet cafes closed after fire kill 24

Mayor Liu Qi on Sunday ordered the city’s 2,400 Internet cafes closed for inspection and threatened to put most of them out of business hours after a fire raged through an unlicensed cyber-cafe, killing 24 people and injuring 13.

Beijing’s leaders appeared to be using the fire as a pretext for speeding up a crackdown on the unwieldy cyber-cafe industry and the free-wheeling flow of information it offers.

China’s Communist Party leadership on Sunday ordered Beijing’s government to “straighten out” the cafes, and Beijing’s mayor announced that all of the Internet cafes will be closed for safety inspections. He suggested only 200 would be allowed to reopen.

Afghanistan: Bodies of 3 Americans en route to U.S.

The bodies of three Americans killed in a military plane crash in Afghanistan were escorted onto a cargo jet Sunday to be returned to the United States.

Two British buglers played “Taps” as pallbearers loaded the flag-draped coffins into the back of the C-17 transport plane at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

The three were killed when their Air Force MC-130H crashed and caught fire after taking off Thursday from an airstrip in southeast Afghanistan.

Two Air Force members were killed Tech. Sgt. Sean M. Corlew, 37, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., and Staff Sgt. Anissa A. Shero, 31, of Grafton, W.Va. The third casualty was Army Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Peter P. Tycz II, 32, of Tonawanda, N.Y.

South Africa: Ship sets sail to aid Antarctic rescue

A South African ship carrying helicopters left Sunday for Antarctica to help rescue 107 people aboard a German ship trapped by an ice drift.

It will take the South African ship, the Agulhas, nine days to reach the edge of the ice, where it will meet up with the Argentinian icebreaker Almirante Irizar to try to free the trapped vessel.

The Magdalena Oldendorff, the trapped German ship, was carrying 79 Russian scientists and 28 crew members, including two Germans, to Cape Town from the Novolazarev-skaya station in northeast Antarctica when it came across the ice drift, according to officials from Antarctic Logistics Center International.

China: Garbage collapse kills 10 workers

A mountain of garbage waterlogged from days of rain collapsed onto a factory and workers’ dormitory in western China, killing 10 people inside, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Four people were dug out of the garbage and were recovering in hospital after Friday’s collapse near the village of Shandong in Chongqing municipality, Xinhua said.

Rescue work was difficult because the collapse also severed power lines and buried roads, it said. Workers digging through the waste also had to contend with the “overpowering stink” of the rotting garbage, Xinhua said.

The dump had been in use for more than a decade and contained tens of thousands of square yards of garbage, Xinhua said.

Havana: Socialist petition surpasses expectations

A petition to declare Cuba’s socialist system “untouchable” has been signed by nearly 70 percent of Cubans of voting age, officials said Sunday.

The signature campaign, running from Saturday morning through noon Tuesday, is being carried out at more than 120,000 stations around the country.

By the end of Saturday, 69.6 percent of Cubans age 16 or older had signed, “passing all” forecasts, Pedro Ross Leal, head of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, told state radio stations Sunday. The legal voting age here is 16.

Fidel Castro was the first to sign on Saturday and estimated that at least 7 million of Cuba’s 11 million citizens would follow in support of the petition for a constitutional amendment declaring the nation’s economic, political and social system cannot be changed. That figure roughly matches the number of people of voting age.

France: Week of strikes planned

French unions are preparing a week of strikes, with employees from air traffic controllers to pediatricians pressing their demands.

Today, public transport workers from the Communist-backed CGT union were to walk off the job in cities such as Paris, Marseille and Montpellier to press demands on salaries and retirement. But the movement was expected to have little impact on traffic.

Some Air France personnel were also expected to strike.

Also today, pediatricians were expected to walk off the job to press for higher fees $28.4 per consultation compared to $21.6 currently.

Zimbabwe: Security laws aimed at political dissenters

Zimbabwean police invoked sweeping new security laws Sunday, firing tear gas to disperse several hundred opposition supporters gathering in Harare to commemorate the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa.

In another sign the government’s campaign against dissent was heating up, a state run newspaper reported big new fees would be imposed on journalists reporting from Zimbabwe.

Last week state-run media reported that President Robert Mugabe put security forces on high alert to crush any mass demonstrations that might call for a re-run of presidential elections held in March, in which Mugabe was declared the winner despite the condemnation of observer groups who said the vote was marred by rigging and intimidation.

Severe new security and media laws were passed shortly before Mugabe’s re-election in what human rights groups say is a bid to silence opposition to his rule.