■ China
Gang of Four member dies
Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋), a member of the notorious Gang of Four led by Jiang Qing (江青), the wife of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), died of cancer last month, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday in the first official word on him in decades. Zhang had been on medical parole since January 1998 and died on April 21, Xinhua said without giving further details. He was 88. The People's Supreme Court gave Zhang a death sentence suspended for two years in January 1981, Xinhua said. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in January 1983, and reduced again to 18 years in prison. Members of the Gang of Four were arrested in a bloodless coup following Mao's death in 1976 in one of the most sensational moments in the power struggles of China's Communist Party, ending a decade of ultra-leftist fervor.
■ China
Fears of more bad weather
A senior meteorologist has warned the country may face an "apocalyptic summer" of floods and drought, threatening corn, cotton and rice crops, state media said yesterday. Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan provinces are already suffering their worst drought in 50 years, taking a toll on rubber and sugar. "China may face a grim situation from seasonal floods or drought this year with potential damage worse than that of last year," the China Daily quoted a weather forecaster as saying.
■ India
Village lacks water, wives
An acute water shortage in central India has made it tough for men of one village to find wives because families are reluctant to condemn their daughters to a life of hardship. The only well near Karhod village in Madhya Pradesh state is several kilometers away, and the women spend hours a day fetching water. Then in summer, the well dries up, causing even greater difficulty, a newspaper reported yesterday. In a country where it is quite unusual in rural villages not to have an arranged marriage at a young age, nearly one-tenth of the 1,200 residents in Karhod are bachelors between the ages of 25 and 60, the paper said.
■ Australia
Airport staff in drug sting
Sydney Airport baggage handlers helped smuggle drugs for a major cocaine importing ring uncovered by Australian police, an official said yesterday. Police raided 15 homes across Sydney on Monday and arrested 11 men, including a former police detective, after a five-month investigation into an alleged conspiracy to import cocaine worth up to A$15 million (US$11.5 million). The plan was to import up to 30kg of cocaine in suitcases carried by drug mules on flights from South America, the official said.
■ Australia
Patrol tracks Japanese boat
A patrol boat yesterday was shadowing a Japanese vessel suspected of illegally fishing for the prized Patagonian Toothfish in the Southern Ocean, but Tokyo refused to give Canberra permission to board the craft, a minister said. The armed Customs vessel Oceanic Viking was following the boat in international waters between Antarctica and Australia's Heard and Macdonald islands. Fisheries Minister Ian Macdonald said the Ryoan Maru 5 was seen retrieving fishing gear in waters that are regulated to protect the species. Two more Japanese boats were suspected of fishing for the toothfish in the area. But Japan refused to give the authorities permission to board, he said.
■ Brazil
Organism Day now official
The small northeastern town of Espertantina declared an official Orgasm Day on Monday -- in a bid to improve relationships between married couples. "We're celebrating orgasm in all its senses. There's even a panel discussion on premature ejaculation. But from what I've seen, women have more trouble achieving orgasm than men, especially in marriage," said Mayor Felipe Santolia. He said the town of 38,000 people has been unofficially celebrating orgasm day for years, but his predecessor had vetoed a bill to make it a municipal holiday. The city council passed a law on Saturday creating the holiday. Orgasm Day celebrations include a series of panel discussions by sexologists and a showing of Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues.''
■ Canada
Friendship with US cooling
Canadians and Americans do not like or respect each other as much as they once did, an Ipsos-Reid poll released on Monday showed. Only 53 percent of Canadians now cite the US as their country's closest friend and ally, down from 60 percent in 2002, while only 14 percent of Americans believe Canada is their closest ally, compared to 18 percent three years ago. However, an almost identical number on both sides believe the expansion of police powers to fight terrorism has gone too far -- 41 percent of Canadians and 40 percent of Americans -- and threatens the "fundamental civil rights of all citizens." A majority in both countries also believe a conviction for marijuana possession should not always result in a criminal record.
■ Canada
Afghan singer dies
Afghani singer Nasrat Parsa died on Sunday night after being swarmed on the street outside his hotel following a performance at a Vancouver theater, police said. ``He had been approached by three male suspects, one punched him and he fell down some stairs hitting his head,'' a policeman said on Monday. ``He was rushed to hospital and was pronounced dead.'' Parsa, 36, who had been living in Germany, died from internal brain bleeding, according to his official Web site. Parsa had released 10 albums since he started recording in 1989 and had been in Canada promoting his new album. A 19-year-old man has been arrested and charged with aggravated assault.
■ United States
Brain study raises questions
The brains of homosexual men respond more like those of women when reacting to a chemical derived from the male sex hormone, according to a study published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The finding also strengthens evidence that humans also respond to pheromones. Swedish researchers exposed women,heterosexual men and homosexual men to chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones. When sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male hormone, portions of the brains involved in sexual activity were activated in gay men and straight women, but not in straight men, the researchers found.
■ United Kingdom
WSJE, WSJA going tabloid
The Wall Street Journal Journal Europe is following in the footsteps of the London Times and switching from broadsheet to tabloid format from October. WSJ Europe and its Asian counterpart will both change to tabloid from Oct. 17 in a move that will also see the two titles more closely aligned with wsj.com, according to publisher Dow Jones.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema