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Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 24, 2001
Rescuers' airplane reaches antarctic
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- A New Zealand air force plane landed safely on an ice runway at a U.S. antarctic research station today, carrying out a risky mission to rescue four ailing Americans. It refueled and took off about an hour later.
Research officials said seven more Americans would be joining the four evacuees.
"Right now, the count is eleven people coming out, for various reasons," said John Sherve, the New Zealand manager for their U.S. employer, Raytheon Polar Services. "The primary purpose of the mission is emergency medical evacuation of one employee."
Others among the evacuees had "family emergencies they need to go take care of," Sherve said. "Several of the evacuees will need medical treatment."
The C130 Hercules arrived at McMurdo Station after a 7 1/2-hour flight from Christchurch, in southern New Zealand.
The McMurdo airlift came hours after blowing snow, high winds and low visibility prevented another emergency airlift from taking off for the South Pole, where a sick American doctor is waiting for a flight out for urgent treatment.
BEIJING -- Authorities have detained a 79-year-old bishop, seven priests and 13 followers of China's underground Catholic church, a U.S.-based lobbying group said Monday.
The arrests, which occurred throughout the country, were made around Easter, it said.
Bishop Cosmas Shi Enxiang was arrested while visiting Beijing on April 13, the Roman Catholic holy day Good Friday, according to the Cardinal Kung Foundation. The foundation in Stamford, Conn., supports China's underground church and monitors government efforts to suppress it. The bishop had been hiding from police since 1996.
China broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and demands that Catholics worship only in churches approved by the China Patriotic Catholic Association, a state-controlled body that does not recognize papal authority.
KOSOVARS RELEASED: Some 143 Kosovo Albanians serving sentences for taking part in the 1999 rebellion against Serb rule were ordered released Monday by the Serbian Supreme Court.
PUTIN CONDEMNS RACIST VIOLENCE: After a weekend in which Russian skinheads stabbed a Chechen man to death near the Kremlin and scores more shouting "Heil Hitler!" rampaged through a market, President Vladimir Putin told his Cabinet on Monday to fight ethnic and racial hatred. "For Russia, a multiethnic country, this is absolutely unacceptable," Putin said after the attack on the Yasenovo market.