International Business Briefs
Held for graft
KABUL: Afghan authorities have detained another high-ranking official in the Kabul municipality on corruption charges, officials said on Sunday, just days after the capital’s mayor was convicted over graft. The arrest and conviction are the first high-profile moves against corruption in Afghanistan since President Hamid Karzai came under renewed Western pressure to crack down on graft. Police detained deputy mayor Abdul Wahaab Sadaat on arrival from Saudi Arabia on Friday after the attorney general issued a warrant for his arrest, a senior prosecutor said. An Afghan court last week sentenced Kabul mayor Mir Abdul Ahad Sahebi to four years in prison for wasting $16,500 of public money. He was released on bail.
Offical jailed
BEIJING: A court in north China has jailed a local official for 13 years for covering up a deadly mining accident, state press said on Sunday of a disaster that occurred ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games. Li Hongxing, a county head in Hebei province, was convicted of “abuse of powers” for ordering a local mine to pay $380,000 in hush money to up to 10 journalists, the Beijing Youth Daily said. The July 14, 2008 accident in Yi county killed 34 miners and was covered up in an apparent bid to spare China embarrassment in the run-up to the Olympic Games, previous media reports said. After a cabinet-level inquiry into the cover up, state prosecutors brought charges against 48 government and mining officials in Yi county and 10 journalists.
Poor catch
TAIPEI: The haul of grey mullets that Taiwan fishermen catch each year has plunged from a peak of 2.7 million 10 years ago to just 100,000 in a worrying sign of damaging climate change, it was reported on Sunday. Fishermen on the west of the island used to look forward to the winter when cold currents from north Asia would bring huge shoals of mullets to the Taiwan Straits to lay eggs. Over the past few decades they had amassed a fortune from the fish and their eggs, which have become a popular delicacy on the Japanese dining tables. Fisherman Chen Fu-chu told the Taipei-based United Evening News that people working the seas off Tungshihship could catch up to 300 mullets each a day during a 20-day period in the winter around a decade ago.
Google mobile soon
SAN FRANCISCO: The Internet on Saturday buzzed with renewed rumors of Google making its own smartphone, after the Internet powerhouse said it is internally dabbling with a mobile device. Google workers are trying out a device that “combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities,” vice-president of product management Mario Queiroz said in a blog post. Google is seeking feedback in a process it refers to as “dogfooding” in which innovations are tested internally before being offered to the public on the basis that employees should be willing to “eat our own dogfood.” The Android-based mobile devices are being shared with Google workers worldwide, according to Queiroz.
