At least eight department heads were facing suspension, said the newspaper, which also published a letter by the group of officials protesting the decision as unlawful.

"We all thought we had completed our company obligation and contributed to the success of the ceremony," the letter said. "We were only thinking of our family back in Hanoi, the kids and the wives waiting."

A company official said, "No one has been laid off yet but they have to criticize themselves for not participating in collective activities."

The organisation also deplored the fact that the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June has been used to tighten the vice on Chinese Internet users.

"It was only to be expected that Google.com would be gradually sidelined after the censored version was launched in January," Reporters Without Borders said. "Google has just definitively joined the club of western companies that comply with online censorship in China. It is deplorable that Chinese Internet users are forced to wage a technological war against censorship in order to access banned content."

Internet users in many major Chinese cities have had difficulty in connecting to the uncensored international version of Google for the past week. The search engine was totally unaccessible throughout the country on 31 May. The blocking then gradually extended to Google News and Google Mail. So the Chinese public is now reduced to using the censored Chinese versions of these services.

At the same time, the authorities have largely managed to neutralise software designed to sidestep censorship since 24 May. Such software as Dynapass, Ultrasurf, Freegate and Garden Networks is normally used by about 100,000 people in China to gain access to news and information that is blocked by the firewall isolating China from the rest of the worldwide web.

Bill Xia, the US-based exile who created Dynapass, said the jamming of these programmes had reached an unprecedented level and he was convinced the authorities were deploying considerable hardware and software resources to achieve it.

Software engineers based abroad have been trying to update these programmes on the basis of information they have received from Internet users inside China. A new version of Dynapass was released a few days ago, but its effectiveness is still extremely limited.

Several months were cut from his sentence for good behaviour.

The Muslim cleric is reportedly the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant organization that is believed to have been behind the bombing and several others in Indonesia. The group is believed to have links to al-Qaeda.

Bashir was arrested a week after an explosives-packed van detonated outside the nightclub on the Indonesian island on Oct. 12, 2002. He was jailed for immigration offences.

He was later released and rearrested on charges of conspiracy.

Bashir's lawyers have said that once released, he intends to return to his Islamic boarding school in central Java.

The St. Thomas Aquinas High School students were taken to a Fort Lauderdale park on Monday to look for clues at a mock crime scene where the instructor had planted phony "evidence."

"The students went up to this one area ... and found a man with his back against the wall and he looked dead. They thought it was part of the skit," Fort Lauderdale Police detective Kathy Collins said.

There was no sign of foul play and the 45-year-old homeless man appeared to have died of natural causes, she said.

It may not have been a murder, but the discovery of the dead man may have persuaded one teen-ager that crime-scene investigation is not his life's work.

"I don't really think I could take finding any more dead bodies, especially if it was rotting," Juan Cantor, 15, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

Neither arm was fully functional and doctors decided to remove the one closest to his chest after tests revealed it was less developed.

Doctors say the boy, Jie-jie, will require long-term physical therapy to build strength in his remaining arm.

The operation took place on Tuesday at the Shanghai Children's Medical Centre.

Dr Chen Bochang, head of the orthopaedics department at Shanghai Children's Medical Centre, said the operation had been "very successful".

"He is now a pretty good condition, although he still needs some time under observation," he said.

Uncertain case

Jie-jie was born on 1 April at a small hospital in Anhui Province.

He is reported to have just one kidney, and may have problems that could lead to curvature of the spine.

When either of his left arms was touched, Jie-jie would cry, but he smiles and responds normally to other stimuli.

Before the surgery, doctors were unsure as to how to approach the operation.

Dr Chen said his case was "quite peculiar".

"We have no record of any child with such a complete third arm."

Dr Chen's hospital is one of China's most experienced in dealing with unusual birth defects, including separating conjoined twins.