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Astronauts land safely in China

By wire services
Published October 17, 2005

BEIJING - A space capsule carrying two Chinese astronauts landed by parachute in the country's northern grasslands before dawn today following a five-day mission meant to affirm China's status as an emerging technological power.

The astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng were "in good health" after their Shenzhou 6 capsule touched down at 4:32 a.m. local time in the Inner Mongolia region, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said retrieval crews had reached the landing site and the two men were undergoing a medical checkup.

The astronauts were shown live on state television climbing out of their kettle-shaped capsule with the help of technicians.

Fei and Nie blasted off Wednesday on China's second manned space mission. It came almost exactly two years after China's first manned space flight.

China is only the third country to send humans into orbit on its own, after Russia and the United States - a source of tremendous national pride as the communist government tries to cement its status as a rising power and help prepare for a moon landing by 2010 and the eventual creation of a space station. Shenzhou means "divine vessel."

KABUL, Afghanistan - Election authorities said Sunday that they have fired about 50 employees for suspected fraud in last month's legislative polls, while human rights advocates warned that about half of the winning candidates are believed to have links to armed groups.

The latest fighting, meanwhile, left eight insurgents dead and two British warplanes damaged.

The suspected election fraud cast a shadow on Afghanistan's latest step toward democracy. About 680 ballot boxes, or 3 percent of the vote, were taken out of the counting process because of suspicions they were stuffed, said Richard Atwood, chief of operations for the joint U.N.-Afghan election commission.

But he ruled out a recount, saying the suspected fraud "is not systematic or widespread across the country."

He said about 50 people had been fired for suspected cheating but did not elaborate.

Atwood said investigations into fraud allegations have slowed vote tallying. Almost a month after the Sept. 18 elections, provisional results have been published in only 20 of the 34 provinces.

ARGENTINA: A fire set by feuding inmates raged through a cellblock at a prison southeast of Buenos Aires early Sunday, killing 32 inmates and leaving two jailers injured, authorities said.

THAILAND: About 20 suspected Muslim separatists stormed a monastery, hacked an elderly Buddhist monk to death and fatally shot two temple boys Sunday in southern Thailand, police said. Two policemen and six other people were killed in separate incidents across Thailand's three southernmost provinces, where more than 1,000 people have been killed since a centurylong struggle for an independent state reignited in 2004.

[Last modified October 17, 2005, 01:19:13]