News In Brief

Quake in Tibet leaves 87 injured
Pti, Beijing

At least 87 people were injured and over 45,000 houses damaged when a 6.1 magnitude earthquake jolted parts of Tibet yesterday.
The quake was followed by several aftershocks, official media said.
Traffic is expected to resume in the affected areas as rescuers have cleared most of the roads, Xinhua reported.

Mass suicide attempt in China
Pti, Beijing

A group of 10 people in China yesterday attempted to commit suicide together by drinking pesticide, protesting against the government's decision to abolish the railway ministry.
China has recently abolished once flourishing railway ministry, a major employer, as it sustained huge losses and merged with the transport ministry, sparking fears of job cuts.
Some of the persons attempted suicides were apparently worked for the railways as they wore T-shirts bearing the " Harbin Railway Bureau" logo, local media reported.

CIA spied on Noam Chomsky
Ians, Washington

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has admitted to having amassed data on MIT linguistics professor and government critic Noam Chomsky during the 1970s, Foreign Policy magazine's The Cable blog said on Tuesday.
For years, the CIA responded to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests about Chomsky by claiming it had no records relevant to the query, The Cable noted.
Dated June 8, 1970, the CIA document said the journey to Hanoi had the "endorsement of Noam Chomsky".

UN probes N Korea arms shipment
BBC Online

UN officials have begun inspecting an arms shipment found on a North Korean ship, Panama's security minister said yesterday.
The Chong Chon Gang was seized last month on the Panama Canal. Inspectors looking for drugs found Cuban arms and two Soviet-made MiG-21 fighter jets.