U.S. newspaper says staffer held in China

An American newspaper has said that one of its journalists was detained and then expelled from China’s Inner Mongolia region while covering tensions over a new policy that reduces the use of the Mongolian language in education.

The Los Angeles Times said in a story published online on Thursday that the reporter was interrogated at a police station, grabbed by the throat and pushed into a cell and held for more than four hours before being forced to leave the northern Chinese region.

The story did not identify the journalist, but the paper’s Beijing bureau chief, Alice Su, confirmed that it was her.

She declined further comment.