International News for Sept. 1 - 14

This is not original reporting. All information has been compiled from the New York Times International News. Silver Chips Online posts this news summary to provide readers with a forum for discussion.

China

September 14 - Zhao Yan, a Chinese research assistant for The New York Times, is to be freed Saturday morning after serving a three-year prison sentence for a fraud conviction that brought criticism to China. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lobbied on the behalf of his freedom with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

India

September 1 - Police in India arrested two people and formerly named two others in custody as suspects in recent bombings in southern India that killed 43 people. The police have blamed Islamic militants who hoped to create tensions between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority.

Iran

September 4 - Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian-American scholar accused of spying left Iran after being imprisoned for three months. Another scholar, Parnaz Azima, remained imprisoned on similar charges.

September 5 - Azima was given permission to leave after seven months of being barred from leaving Iran.

Iraq

September 12 - Two soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that was in the New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They died when their five-ton cargo truck they were in overturned.

Japan

September 3 - Takehiko Endo, Japan's new agricultural minister, resigned only a week after his appointment as a result of a scandal involving the misuse of farm subsidies. Endo was the fourth Japanese cabinet minister to step down in the past year.