A critically ill former Yukos oil firm executive set to be tried for embezzlement will be transferred from prison to hospital, Russian officials said yesterday, in a rare victory for human rights activists in the last months of President Vladimir Putin's rule.
"The decision has been taken to hospitalize him," a spokesman for the prison sentencing board said.
Human rights experts have accused the authorities of failing to give proper treatment to Vasily Aleksanian, 35, who is suffering from cancer and AIDS.
Campaigners, who have staged several protests in Moscow in recent days to demand hospitalization for Aleksanian, hailed the decision by the prison service.
"We are very happy that our campaign has brought this result. The main thing is for him to get proper treatment," said Tatyana Monakhova, one of nine activists who had declared a hunger strike over the case.
A lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former chief executive of Yukos, said on Echo of Moscow radio that the former tycoon would end a hunger strike he started last week over the case once Aleksanian was hospitalized.
In a statement, Khodorkovsky claimed that Aleksanian had been blackmailed, with the authorities offering him medical help in exchange for giving evidence against his former boss.
The dismantlement of Yukos, once Russia's biggest oil company, since 2003 on charges of massive tax fraud and embezzlement has fueled international criticism of Putin's eight-year rule, which will end after the presidential election on March 2.
The decision to hospitalize Aleksanian follows the ruling by a judge in Moscow on Wednesday to suspend his trial on embezzlement and money laundering charges so he could receive better treatment.
Drew Holiner, another of his lawyers, said in a statement that Aleksanian had been denied treatment for 14 months.
In addition, he was being held in a Moscow prison's infectious disease unit, "an incomprehensible situation since he is suffering from severe immunity deficiency," according to the statement.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained