■ CHINA
Relative of Mao dies
Xinhua news agency reported that the daughter-in-law of Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) has died in Beijing at age 69. The China Photographers Association’s Web site said Shao Hua (邵華) died on Tuesday after an unspecified illness. She headed the association since 2002. Shao was the wife of Mao’s second son, Mao Anqing (毛岸青). She was also a major general in the People’s Liberation Army.
■MALAYSIA
Make-up not encouraged
Women in a city ruled by conservative Islamists are being urged by authorities to forsake bright lipstick and noisy high-heels “to preserve their dignity and avoid rape.” Pamphlets have been distributed recommending that Muslim women shun heavy make-up and loud shoes. The municipal officials in Kota Bharu, capital of Kelantan state, which is run by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party, said the code was merely advice for women who wish to follow the “Islamic way.” Azman Mohamad Daham, a spokesman for the municipality, said the goal of the modesty drive was to prevent rape and safeguard the women’s dignity, he said.
■CHINA
Two helicopters crash
Two helicopters believed to belong to the military crashed in Inner Mongolia yesterday, state media and a local official said, with no immediate reports of casualties. The crash happened near the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot, Xinhua news agency reported. The site of the accident was confirmed to be 20km from the seat of Qingshuihe County, Xinhua said. “We believe the helicopters were from the military,” a county government official said. “But we don’t have any cellphone connection with people at the scene.”
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Monet painting sets record
A water lily painting by impressionist master Claude Monet has sold for more than £40 million (US$80 million) at auction in London on Tuesday night, kicking off a week of modern-art sales. Le bassin aux nympheas (Water Lily Pond) was sold by Christie’s for £40,921,250, including buyer’s premium, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold by the auction house in Europe. It was part of a four-work collection of water lily paintings that Monet put up for sale during his lifetime. They were signed and dated by the artist in 1919.
■SPAIN
Doubts raised about painting
Francisco de Goya’s Colossus has long been considered one of the Spanish master’s greatest works. But Jose Luis Diez, the curator of 19th century art at Madrid’s Prado Museum, said the Colossus could have been painted by Asensio Juli, an assistant in Goya’s workshop. Diez, who has carried out a detailed analysis of the picture, claims the initials in the bottom left-hand corner read “AJ.” Diez told Goya experts at the Prado he believes this means the painting could have been by Juli.
■SPAIN
Indictments sought
The Brussels-based human rights organization, Equipo Nizkor, has asked a court to indict four alleged former Nazi concentration camp guards and seek their extradition from the US over the deaths of Spanish citizens, a lawyer said on Tuesday. The group named the suspects as John Demjanjuk, an 88-year-old retired auto worker in Ohio who is also being sought by Germany; Anton Tittjung; Josias Kumpf and Johann Leprich. The US has been trying to deport all four for years for lying on their immigration papers about their Nazi past, but no country is willing to take them. The suit was presented last week under Spain’s principle of universal jurisdiction, which states that war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism, torture and other heinous offenses can be prosecuted in Spain, even if they are alleged to have been committed abroad.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cigar box being probed
Scotland Yard confirmed on Tuesday they are examining a red Iraqi cigar case belonging to London Mayor Boris Johnson to determine whether it is a looted Iraqi artifact. Johnson says he handed over the case on Monday. In a column in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph, Johnson said he took the case in 2003 from former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz’s bombed-out home a few days after Baghdad fell to US forces. “The circumstances in which I came by this object were so morally ambiguous that I cannot quite think of it as theft,” he wrote in the paper. He called the investigation “ludicrous.”
■HOLY SEE
Vatican defends dead banker
The Vatican defended the late archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank whose tenure was marred by financial scandal, from media reports on Tuesday that he ordered the killing of a 15-year-old girl in 1983. Marcinkus, an American who died in Arizona in 2006 at the age of 84, was accused by the girlfriend of a slain mobster of hiring hitmen to kidnap and kill Emanuela Orlandi in 1983, the Italian media said. “Defamatory, baseless accusations were published regarding Mons. Marcinkus, who has been dead for some time and is unable to defend himself,” the Vatican in a statement chiding the media for publishing the accusations “without any checks.”
■UNITED STATES
Drunk in mower joyride
Alaska State troopers used lights and sirens to apprehend a man suspected of driving under the influence after he allegedly led them on a slow-speed chase that covered several lawns. The 20-year-old man was on a riding mower. Sunday’s pursuit lasted about 61m and reached speeds of up to 8kph before a trooper got out of a cruiser and told the man to stop. Troopers received a call early on Sunday complaining of an intoxicated man driving a mower. They said Wyatt Lewis’s blood-alcohol content was 0.18 percent, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
■UNITED STATES
Truck driver fools villagers
Bill Jakob arrived in Gerald, Missouri, with an offer to help police curb the community’s methamphetamine problem. He had a badge and a gun, and he told officials he had previously worked as an anti-drug agent in Illinois. He even drove a fully equipped Ford Crown Victoria, which he said was for undercover work. There was just one problem: Jakob was no police officer. The 36-year-old man was an unemployed truck driver with a criminal record and had recently filed for bankruptcy. Now this village of 1,200 people is confronting allegations that Jakob and other officers mistreated and robbed many of the people they arrested.
■UNITED STATES
Man repays gas loan
A couple has been repaid for a liquid asset they loaned out 34 years ago. Violet and Harold Goff of Southington, Ohio, said a man showed up at their home recently and explained that he had appeared at their door in 1974 when he was 17 and had run out of gas. Back then, Harold Goff got a five-gallon can of gasoline for Jeffrey Hardin. Goff remembers telling the teen to make sure to pay it back. Hardin still lives in the area and told the Goffs the debt had remained in the back of his head. So, he presented them with a plastic, 19-liter container of gas.
■UNITED STATES
Man killed by lion
A cougar attacked, killed and partially ate a New Mexico man, authorities said on Tuesday. A search party found the body of Robert Nawojski, 55, in a wooded area near his mobile home in Pinos Altos, New Mexico, late last week, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish said. Investigators concluded that Nawojski had been attacked and killed by a cougar at a spot close to his home, where he lived alone and was known to bathe and shave outdoors. Spokesman Dan Williams said the cougar subsequently dragged the man’s body a short distance into nearby woodland and ate and buried parts of it.
■CANADA
Man killed by Taser
Canadian investigators were looking into the death of a man who collapsed after being subdued with a Taser in a confrontation with police. A Taser is a weapon that is used to shock or stun fleeing or belligerent suspects. It had been considered less lethal than conventional guns, but its use has become controversial because of reports that Tasers have caused injury or death. John Yoannou, spokesman for Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, said on Tuesday investigators were looking at a case involving Jeffrey Mark Marreel. He said provincial police officers responding to a call about man causing a disturbance on Monday confronted Marreel.
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