BEIJING (AFP) –
Authorities in China’s Xinjiang have restored access to email services and 32 Internet sites that were blocked after ethnic unrest broke out in the region in July, state media reported Sunday.

Restrictions on the number of text messages a mobile user could send have also been lifted, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Authorities in the Xinjiang will restore communication services “step by step,” Xinhua said, citing a spokesperson for the local government.

Internet and email services were cut following the outbreak of clashes between ethnic Han Chinese and mainly Muslim Uighurs, in which almost 200 people died and 1,600 were wounded.

The authorities accused Uighur organisers of using the Internet and mobile phones to orchestrate the unrest.

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ORANJESTAD, Aruba – Authorities will search once again for a missing U.S. teen after an American couple took an underwater picture of what they believe might be Natalee Holloway’s remains, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office told The Associated Press on Saturday.

A police diving team will soon do preliminary work at the spot where officials believe the picture was taken, spokeswoman Ann Angela said.

It is too early to say whether the tip is more viable than the other numerous ones authorities have received, Angela said.

“It could be a skull, it could be a stone, it could be anything,” she said. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

The couple cannot pinpoint the exact location, but a local resident believes he can find the spot, Angela said.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Open government in the heart of Silicon Valley is starting to mean turn off, tune out, power down.

When the San Jose City Council meets just miles from the Apple and Google campuses, its members shut down all portable electronic devices, as though they were in a theater. If they’re on and they get a text or e-mail from a lobbyist or anyone discussing city business, they must say so right then and there.

Experts say San Jose’s policy is a model for open government in the digital age. Other cities and state legislatures are adopting their own rules at a time when officials are increasingly fielding requests for lawmakers’ cellphone records, e-mails and text messages.

“Essentially what we’ve said is a public record is a public record,” San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said, “no matter where it exists.”

More than half of the legislative chambers in the states restrict the use of electronic devices in some form, including dozens that prohibit the use of cell phones on the floor, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

In California, the new Assembly Speaker, John Perez, D-Los Angeles, is trying to impose a ban on texting from lobbyists to lawmakers on the floor or in committee. The state Senate already requests that its members not use personal cell phones and electronic devices during meetings.

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BEIJING – China’s capital woke up to orange-tinted skies Saturday as the strongest sandstorm so far this year hit the country’s north, delaying some flights at Beijing’s airport and prompting a dust warning for Seoul.

The sky glowed and a thin dusting of sand covered Beijing, causing workers to muffle their faces in vast Tiananmen Square. The city’s weather bureau gave air quality a rare hazardous ranking.

Air quality is “very bad for the health,” China’s national weather bureau warned. It said people should cover their mouths when outside and keep doors and windows closed.

China’s expanding deserts now cover one-third of the country because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought. The shifting sands have led to a sharp increase in sandstorms — the grit from which can travel as far as the western United States.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has estimated that the number of sandstorms has jumped six-fold in the past 50 years to two dozen a year.

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London –
He had a few minutes to call his brother in Gaza before his flight took off from Damascus, Syria. A cousin got on the line, too, and shared gossip from the Jabalya refugee camp, say family members. He told them to jot down the name of his hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He would be there for only a few days, in case the family needed anything. If he continued on to China after, or Iran, he said, he would let them know.

Emirates Flight EK912 was packed. He traveled on a coach ticket he had bought online the day before, and without his usual two bodyguards, who were unable to book seats on the same flight. During the nearly three-hour flight, he was served lunch (chicken breast or lamb brochette, sir?) and jotted some notes in a spiral notebook.

Using a fake name and passport of Mahmoud Abdul Raouf Mohammed – he had five such aliases – the man landed at Terminal 3 of Dubai’s international airport at 3:15 p.m., sailed through immigration, wheeled his black carry-on over to a waiting Toyota Land Cruiser at the taxi rank, and hopped in for a quick, five-minute drive.

At 3:48 p.m. on Jan. 19, he walked into the lobby of the Al Bustan Rotana hotel. Less than five hours later, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, cofounder of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the paramilitary wing of Hamas – would be dead.

As the liaison between Hamas and Iran for weapons-smuggling operations into Gaza, Mr. Mabhouh had a lot of enemies: He was wanted in Israel for the 1989 kidnapping and killing of two soldiers; he was loathed by members of Hamas’s rival Palestinian faction, Fatah; and Jordanian intelligence was looking for him. Egypt, where he spent all of 2003 in jail, also wanted him. The man had survived several assassination attempts.

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