World Briefs

Six Japanese men completed a treacherous 120-kilometre swim relay to Taiwan yesterday to thank the island for its help after Japan’s deadly tsunami.

The six young men took the plunge on Saturday despite the threat of shark attacks and strong Pacific Ocean currents, for the relay swim from Yonakuni, a Japanese islet 110 kilometres east of Taiwan.

The group were flanked by several Taiwanese coastguard vessels as they swam near Suao, a major fishing port in northeastern Ilan county, and hundreds of people waved the national flags of Taiwan and Japan as they arrived.

“We did it! We did it! Thank you Taiwan!” group leader Suzuki Kazuya shouted as the swimmers reached a beach near Suao after the 72-mile swim.

The swimmers, all aged between 20 and 30, brought a letter of gratitude from the local chiefs of three prefectures hit by the deadly tsunami in March.

Taiwan donated more than 20 billion yen ($2.6 billion) to Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, making it one of the top donors. (AFP)

HK biggest drug bust

Hong Kong police have made their biggest ever cocaine bust, seizing more than 1,200lb (560kg) of the drug with an estimated street value of about HK$600 million (£48.7 million) and arresting eight people.

Narcotics bureau officers acting on a tip-off carried out raids at a suburban warehouse and other locations across the city starting on Friday, police said yesterday. The five men and three women arrested included five Mexican nationals, an American and a Colombian. (PA)

‘Fake painting’

A painting that sold for over $11 million under the name of a renowned Chinese artist was actually made decades after his death by a student in a classroom exercise, a group of artists has alleged.

The nude, entitled The Body of Miss Jiang Biwei, was accredited to the well-known artist Xu Beihong and sold at auction in June 2010 for 72.8 million yuan ($11.4 million).

But an open letter posted on several online forums by a group of graduates from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing said the oil painting was actually produced by one of them in 1983 - 30 years after Xu’s death.

“This is a picture that cannot be more familiar to our class. It’s a classroom exercise done by one of us.

“We cannot determine which of us produced it, but many of us have kept paintings from the class,” says the letter. (AFP)

Mass eviction

Bailiffs surrounded Britain’s biggest traveller settlement yesterday to carry out a mass eviction but residents chained themselves to barricades and vowed to resist the clearance.

Around 200 remaining travellers and supporters locked themselves into Dale Farm in southeast England, blocking the main gate and setting up barricades using tyres and barrels filled with concrete. (AFP)

Drunk navigator

The navigator of a Russian plane that crashed onto a highway in Karelia in June, killing 47 people, was drunk, an official report said yesterday.

The navigator “was in a light state of alcoholic intoxication” with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.81, as the crew attempted to land the plane in bad weather, the Interstate Aviation Committee said in a report posted on its website.

The RusAir Tu-134 was trying to land at its destination of Petrozavodsk in the Karelia region near Finland in bad weather close to midnight on June 20, but failed to make the runway and instead hurtled onto a highway and caught fire.

The report said the experienced navigator, 50, was “excessively active”, with data recorders showing he had told the chief pilot several times to speed up the landing. (AFP)

Lebanon murders

The bodies of a Lebanese woman and her six children have been found shot dead in their Beirut apartment, a police spokesman said yesterday.

“A 55-year-old woman and her six children were found shot dead late on Sunday night in their apartment in Basta,” an impoverished neighbourhood in the Lebanese capital, the spokesman said.

“The investigation is ongoing and we have nothing final yet on this horrific massacre.”

Preliminary information indicated that the eldest son, aged 25, could have shot his mother and five siblings dead before heading to another room and turning the gun on himself. The bodies of the mother and five children had been found inside one bedroom, while the eldest son was found in another with a gunshot wound to his head and a hunting rifle at his side. The father of the family, who runs a small bakery in the neighbourhood, returned home to the scene on Sunday night after spending the weekend in his native village in southern Lebanon . (AFP)