Zhou Fenying is a living witness to the dark history that still poisons China’s relations with Japan more than 60 years after World War II. When Zhou was 22, Japanese soldiers came to her village in eastern China, grabbed her and her sister-in-law and carted them off to a military brothel, she says.
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Roger Federer, bidding for a fifth successive Wimbledon title, eased into the second round on Monday but Swiss compatriot Martina Hingis was given an almighty fright by a player ranked 233 in the world. Federer returned to a much-changed and uncovered Centre Court, which had been drenched in traditional, heavy Wimbledon rain.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi on Monday condemned the working of the African Union and called for the creation of a ”United States of Africa” at the forthcoming AU summit in Ghana. ”The OAU [Organisation of African Unity, predecessor of the AU] failed, the council of African ministers failed, the African Parliament is a rump Parliament,” he said.
A Somali government soldier opened fire on Monday at a crowd clamouring for food aid in Mogadishu and killed at least three people, witnesses said. Three others were seriously wounded when the soldier fired in an apparent attempt to disperse a multitude trying to barge into a local authority building.
Firefighters were on Monday battling to contain a forest fire near California’s Lake Tahoe that destroyed as many as 220 homes and forced the evacuation of 1 000 people, officials said. The blaze, which officials said was probably caused by humans, erupted on Sunday near the southern tip of Lake Tahoe, 304km north-east of San Francisco.
France striker Thierry Henry passed a medical at Barcelona on Monday, paving the way for him to complete his move from Arsenal. ”He has passed all the tests satisfactorily,” Barcelona team doctor Ricard Pruna was quoted as saying on the club’s website.
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is a wizard when it comes to kissing, one of his co-stars revealed on Monday at a press conference in London to publicise the latest movie in the franchise. Speaking before Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix premieres in the city on July 3, Katie Leung, who plays classmate Cho Chang, said some of her friends were jealous.
Cracks emerged in a crippling public-sector strike on Monday after two unions representing about 160 000 members withdrew from one of the largest mass actions in post-apartheid South Africa. The Health and Other Services Personnel Union accused the Congress of South African Trade Unions of pursuing a political agenda in the strike over pay.
Rebels in Ethiopia’s remote eastern Somali region accused the government on Monday of using war planes to bomb three villages, killing about 40 people, in an escalating offensive against the insurgents. The government said it had the Ogaden National Liberation Front ”on the run”, but denied using planes during fighting in the poor and arid region.