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Arrest over China-Japan 'poisoned dumplings' row

A man has been arrested in China accused of poisoning dumplings in a case which led to a diplomatic rift with Japan, state media reports.

Temporary factory worker Lu Yueting, 36, allegedly put insecticide in some frozen dumplings because he was unhappy with his pay and colleagues.

The food was exported to Japan, where 10 people became ill, sparking a scare over Chinese food.

China had denied that the contamination occurred on its territory.

Chinese police have found injectors used to poison the dumplings, according to a Ministry of Public Security statement reported by the Xinhua news agency.

Traces of methamidophos, a highly toxic insecticide were found in the dumplings.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama issued a statement praising China's efforts to clear up the matter.

Chinese food exports to Japan fell sharply after the incident, reports the AP news agency.

The incident followed other scares over the safety of Chinese-made products, including poisoned pet food and concerns over dangerous toys.

SUMO

Sumo is a Japanese style of wrestling and Japan's national sport. It originated in ancient times as a performance to entertain the Shinto gods. Many rituals with religious background are still followed today.

The basic rules of sumo are simple: the wrestler who first touches the ground with anything besides the soles of his feet, or who leaves the ring before his opponent, loses. Fights take place on an elevated ring, called a "dohyo", which is made of clay and covered in a layer of sand. The fights themselves usually last only a few seconds, or in rare cases, about a minute.

At the top of the sumo wrestlers' hierarchy stand the yokozuna (grand champion). At the moment, there is one yokozuna, Hakuho from Mongolia. Once a wrestler reaches the rank of yokozuna, he cannot lose this status but he will be expected to retire when his results begin to worsen. Many former wrestlers remain active in the sumo world as members of the Japan Sumo Association.

Most elite wrestlers are highly trained athletes between 20 and 35 years old. They typically live together in residential and training complexes, called "stables", where all aspects of life, from sleeping and eating to training and free time, are strictly regimented by the coach, called the "stable master".

There are no weight restrictions or classes in sumo, meaning that wrestlers can easily find themselves matched off against someone many times their size. As a result, weight gain is an essential part of sumo training. The typical sumo dish, chanko nabe, is a hearty stew full of vegetables, meat and fish.

Six tournaments are held every year, each one lasting 15 days. Three of the tournaments are held in Tokyo (January, May, September), and one each in Osaka (March), Nagoya (July) and Fukuoka (November).

Russia braces for terrorism's return as 38 die in subway bombings

With a pair of powerful blasts on Moscow subway cars that killed at least 38 people Monday, two female suicide bombers shattered Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's claim to have contained a separatist insurgency in Russia's southwest and forced the nation's capital to brace for a terrorist comeback after several years of calm.

The explosions occurred about 45 minutes apart at downtown stations during the morning rush hour. They followed triumphant reports in recent weeks that Russian security forces had killed several top leaders of the Islamist rebel movement, which seeks to establish a fundamentalist state in the North Caucasus region.

The elimination of each militant leader was portrayed as a victory for Putin's tough approach to suppressing the insurgency, which had not mounted an attack in Moscow in nearly six years. "We have been able to break the spine of terrorism," Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's strongman governor in Chechnya, declared two days ago.

But as crowds of dazed, bloodied passengers emerged from smoke-filled subway stations Monday, and national television showed images of mangled bodies strewn on subway cars and station platforms, officials acknowledged the obvious: The rebels had not been defeated, and they appeared to be making good on threats to stage attacks again not just in their volatile homeland but also in the heart of Russia.