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China jails journalist accused of leaking state secrets for 7 years

By Sui-Lee Wee BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court has sentenced a journalist accused of leaking an internal Communist Party document to a foreign website to seven years in prison, her lawyer said on Friday, a ruling that reflects the sensitivity surrounding the party's inner workings. Gao Yu, 71, who was tried behind closed doors in Beijing last November, was convicted on a charge of providing state secrets to foreign contacts, her lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said. The United States called on China to release Gao at the United Nations Human Rights Council session in Geneva last month. Gao was detained on accusations she had leaked a party document, which warned senior members against "seven mistaken ideologies", including the "universal values" of human rights, according to Gao's other lawyer, Shang Baojun.

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US govt sued over sea turtles snared in shrimp nets

Tens of thousands of endangered sea turtles die every year in the United States when they are inadvertently snared in shrimp nets, an environmental group alleged in a lawsuit filed against the government. The Southeast shrimp trawl industry, the largest in the United States, kills some 53,000 of the turtles each year in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, the advocacy group Oceana said. "If people knew that their order of shrimp cocktail came with a side of government-authorized sea turtle they would be horrified," said Oceana assistant general counsel Eric Bilsky. "Studies have shown TEDs are 97 percent effective at preventing sea turtle deaths when used correctly, yet the Fisheries Service is not enforcing their use, or even requiring TEDs in all vessels that can use them," Bilsky added.

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Indonesian Islamic parties seek ban on alcohol consumption

By Eveline Danubrata and Michael Taylor JAKARTA (Reuters) - Two Islamic parties have proposed legislation to ban all consumption of alcoholic drinks and hand jail terms of up to two years to offenders in Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population. "This is not a religious or ideological issue," Abdul Hakim of the Prosperous Justice Party told Reuters. "This is purely for the protection of the children of the nation." The bill aims to ban the sale, production, distribution and consumption of beverages with an alcohol content exceeding one percent, including local brews such as rice wine popular in many parts of the sprawling archipelago. To become law it would have to be signed by President Joko Widodo, who has adopted a hard line against drug offenders since taking office last October.

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Following Clinton, Rubio dives into US presidential race

Calling for new American leadership that is not "stuck in the 20th century," Republican Senator Marco Rubio officially launched his presidential bid Monday, a day after top Democrat Hillary Clinton announced her campaign. Rubio, a 43-year-old Florida lawmaker and son of immigrants from Cuba who often casts his personal arc as the embodiment of the American Dream, presented the 2016 presidential election as "a generational choice about what kind of country we will be." The remark, in a hometown speech at Miami's Freedom Tower that once processed Cuban immigrants into the United States, was a clear jab at his older rivals, notably Clinton, 67, and his fellow Republican and former mentor Jeb Bush, 62.

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Republicans launch opening salvos against Hillary Clinton

Many Republicans, including two presidential candidates, other possible contenders and party activists, quickly mounted a full-force campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton on Sunday, with some starting the fight before her official announcement that she was running for president. The nominating conventions for both parties are more than a year away, and the November 2016 election is 19 months in the future, but Clinton has long been considered her party's front-runner and Republicans have been revving up to oppose her run. On Sunday afternoon, a photo of the former secretary of state topped the home page of GOP.com, the website for the Republican National Committee, adorned with a stop sign reading "Stop Hillary." Republican shots came throughout the day in messages to supporters, statements, interviews and tweets that attacked Clinton's entire career, including her time as first lady when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, occupied the Oval Office.

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A year after ferry disaster, safety concerns persist in S. Korea

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - Nearly a year after her 16-year-old daughter was among 304 people killed when an overloaded ferry capsized, Park Eun-mi says not much has changed when it comes to safety in South Korea. "Even after what we've been through, I wonder why society doesn't change, and how people so quickly forget," said Park, surrounded in her apartment by photographs of her daughter, who is among nine victims of the ferry disaster whose body has yet to be recovered. Public safety was mostly an afterthought in South Korea's decades of rampant economic growth, defined by an attitude of "pali, pali," or "hurry, hurry." The Sewol ferry disaster on April 16 last year led to much soul-searching - the majority of the victims were, like Park's daughter, teenagers on a school outing. The total number of ship accidents in South Korea, for example, rose in 2014 as did the incidence of fires and the number of people killed in them.

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Seven injured in explosion on Thai tourist island

The explosion occurred on Friday night in the basement car park of Central Festival mall on Samui island as late-night shoppers were still inside the building. The bomb squad will investigate this morning," said colonel Apichart Boonsriroj, police commander of Surat Thani province on the mainland. "Six Thais and a 12-year-old girl were treated for minor injuries," said Poonsak Sophonsasmorong of the island's disaster prevention office. The explosion, which damaged several nearby cars, sparked local media speculation that it may have been a car bomb linked to a festering insurgency in Thailand's southernmost provinces, some 400 kilometres ( 250 miles) further south.

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