IN BRIEF (Page 8)

China

Beijing slams WWII comparison

The Foreign Ministry denounced the Philippine president on Friday for his "outrageous" comments comparing the dispute over the South China Sea with appeasement by the West of Nazi Germany before World War II. Philippine President Benigno Aquino, interviewed by The New York Times this week, called for more global support for the Philippines over the territorial issue, comparing it to the failure by the West to support Czechoslovakia against Adolf Hitler's demands in 1938.

Japan

Chinese fishing boat fire kills 6

A Chinese fishing boat caught fire off the Japanese coast on Friday, leaving six people dead and one badly injured and one slightly injured, officials from the Chinese consulate general in Fukuoka told Xinhua News Agency. The tragedy occurred about 280 kilometers northwest of Amami Island, Kagoshima Prefecture, in southern Japan at about 2:20 pm local time, the officials said.

Tokyo abandons troubled reactor

The nation will scrap plans to generate electricity at its multibillion-dollar experimental Monju fast breeder reactor, a media report said on Friday, in a move that could affect the nation's nuclear fuel cycle program. Monju was designed to generate more fuel than it consumes via nuclear chain reaction and was intended to be at the core of a program that would reuse spent fissile materials in a country that has few natural resources of its own.

Indonesia

Naval ship name angers Singapore

Anger is mounting in Singapore over Indonesia's decision to name a new naval ship after two marines executed for a 1960s bombing in the city state's main shopping district that killed three people. Three Singapore ministers have asked Indonesia to reconsider the move to name the new frigate after Osman Haji Mohammed Ali and Harun Said, who were convicted for the March 1965 bombing of MacDonald House on Orchard Road.

Australia

New giant jellyfish found

Residents of a sleepy hamlet in Tasmania found a previously unknown species of giant jellyfish washed up on a beach, prompting excitement among scientists in Australia as they work to formally name and classify the creature. About 1.5 meters across, the white jellyfish with a pink spot in the middle is believed to be a relative of the lion's mane species popularly known as a "snotty" as it resembles mucus.

Xinhua-Reuters-AFP-AP

(China Daily 02/08/2014 page8)