China investigates search engine Baidu after student's death

China has launched an investigation into search giant Baidu after the death of a student who tried an experimental cancer therapy he found online.

Wei Zexi, who died last month from a rare form of cancer, had sought the treatment from a hospital that came top of the list on his Baidu web search.

Baidu has come under fire for allegedly selling listings to bidders without adequately checking their claims.

In a statement Baidu said it was investigating the matter.

The company told the BBC: "We deeply regret the death of Wei Zexi and our condolences go out to his family.

"Baidu strives to provide a safe and trustworthy search experience for our users, and has launched an immediate investigation of the matter."

Baidu owns search engine and social media services, and is often compared to Google.

On Baidu, listings that have paid for a prominent placement are marked at the bottom with a small sign saying "promote", but many say this does not identify them as paid-for listings sufficiently clearly.

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Baidu's value fell by more than five-billion dollars on Tuesday, after its shares slumped in the US on news of an investigation by China's internet regulator. Baidu's Nasdaq-listed shares fell 7.92%.

Baidu is China's largest search engine with 70% market share and more than 660 million people using its mobile search every month.

Mass arrests reported in Indonesia's restive Papua

Nearly 2,000 pro-independence demonstrators were arrested by police in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua over the past week before most of them were released.

The mass arrests coincided with the run-up to the anniversary of the territory's integration into Indonesia.

Veronica Koman, a lawyer based in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, told Al Jazeera dozens of people were arrested on Tuesday, with at least 19 children detained in the town of Fakfak, about 1,500km from Jayapura, the provincial capital of Papua province.

"Six have been admitted to hospital today," she said citing sources on the ground.

In the largest mass arrests known so far, 1,449 people were arrested on Monday in Jayapura, 200 in Merauke, 45 in Semarane, 42 in Makaffar, and dozens more across the resource rich region, she added.

Exactly 1,449 people were arrested in Jayapura on Monday [Veronica Koman/Al Jazeera]

Victor Yeimo, the chairman of the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), which organised the protest, told Al Jazeera that most of the nearly 2,000 people arrested had been released but hundreds were still in detention.

Foreign journalists have been banned from reporting in Papua and local journalists barred from covering the protests.

Police told Al Jazeera that there were no reports of violence and that the protesters did not have a permit to hold the rally.

"At least two people were arrested while handing a petition to the police," Koman said.

"It's unclear what legal justification the Indonesian authorities could have for the arrests, we're currently investigating what the reasons could be."

Violent separatist conflict

Papua has seen a long-running and often violent separatist conflict since being incorporated into Indonesia after a widely criticised United Nations-backed referendum in 1969. Dutch colonial rule ended on May 1, 1963.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has made several trips to Papua since taking office in 2014 and has promised to bring development to the impoverished region after decades of neglect.

His government has also released several political prisoners and pledged to resolve cases of human rights violations.

But security forces still maintain a strong presence in the restive region and are often seen as taking a heavy-handed approach to peaceful demonstrations, activists say.

Papua province and West Papua make up the western half of an island north of Australia, with independent Papua New Guinea to the east.

Source: Al Jazeera

North Korea sentences US man to 10 years hard labour 'for spying'

North Korea on Friday sentenced an ethnic Korean citizen of the United States to 10 years in prison.

Kim Dong Chul had been detained in the North on suspicion of engaging in spying and stealing state secrets.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labor after a brief trial in Pyongyang on Friday. North Korea’s Supreme Court found Kim guilty of crimes and espionage and subversion of under Articles 60 and 64 of the North’s criminal code.
Further details were not immediately available.
Kim’s sentencing comes on the heels of a 15-year sentence handed down on Otto Warmbier, an American university student who the North says was engaged in anti-state activities while visiting the country as a tourist earlier this year.
North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to control the entire Korean Peninsula. Some foreigners previously arrested have read statements of guilt they later said were coerced.
Most of those who are sentenced to long prison terms are released before serving their full time.
In the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
Both had crossed North Korea’s border from China illegally.
It took a visit in November 2014 by U.S. spy chief James Clapper to bring home Mathew Miller, also arrested after entering the country as a tourist, and Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, who had been incarcerated since November 2012.
Jeffrey Fowle, a U.S. tourist detained for six months at about the same time as Miller, was released just before that and sent home on a U.S. government plane. Fowle left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.