■CHINA
Farmers attack police
PHOTO: AFP
Hundreds of angry tea farmers attacked a police station in Guangdong Province after rumors spread that a man had been killed in custody for fighting for farmers’ rights, state media said yesterday. The attackers damaged the station with stones and bricks and set police vehicles on fire in Saturday’s incident, the China Daily said of the latest in a string of attacks on police stations. The riot lasted more than four hours before being brought under control, it said, giving no other information on damage or injuries. Tea farmers in the city of Yingde have complained for years that authorities have not provided them with required medical insurance, social pensions and unemployment compensation, the paper said.
■CHINA
Three officials jailed
A court in Sichuan Province sentenced three village officials to jail terms of seven years each for taking bribes to distribute earthquake relief funds, state media said yesterday. The officials had organized a lottery for victims of last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake in which the winners would get government funds intended to help quake-hit families get back on their feet, the Beijing News said. The officials in Jinya village near the city of Mianyang then accepted bribes from households to influence the results, it said. The three sentenced were the village’s Communist Party secretary Zuo Duyuan, the director of its governing committee An Xinwu and village comptroller Yi Deyin, the report said.
■AUSTRALIA
Fake doctor arrested
For 30 years Paul Dean appeared to live a saintly life tending to orphans and helping heal lepers in impoverished villages in India. Dean, who has been arrested on child sex charges, was in fact a failed businessman who fled Australia in 1976 on a forged passport owing creditors hundreds of thousands of dollars, news reports said on Monday. Dean wandered the subcontinent for 30 years, passing himself as a university professor, medical practitioner, Catholic brother and priest. He amputated limbs and performed eye operations and said Mass for Mother Teresa’s missionaries, national broadcaster ABC said.
■NEW ZEALAND
One in three teens had sex
At least one-in-three 16-year-olds questioned in a survey of 500 youngsters have had sexual intercourse, a newspaper reported yesterday. Half of the teens surveyed by the New Zealand Council of Educational Research said they had been in love. The Family Planning Association said the results showed a need for better sex education. “This shows how important it is for parents to talk to their children around sexual health and sexuality,” Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond told the Press newspaper.
■AFGHANISTAN
Flooding, landslides kill 94
Heavy flooding and landslides have killed 94 people and left thousands of families homeless in the north since last Wednesday, the UN said on Monday. Some 8,000 houses in 207 villages have been totally or partially destroyed after heavy rain across five provinces, affecting 13,689 families, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement. The flooding damaged more than 100 bridges and about 600km of roads. About 30 people were also killed by flooding in northern areas of the country earlier this month. The mud homes that house most Afghans in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.
■GREECE
Flashing ‘nuns’ freed
Seventeen British men stood trial dressed in modified nun’s habits in Iraklio, Crete, on Monday for flashing their bottoms in public, but walked free after no one showed up to testify that their behavior was offensive. Police said they arrested the 17 men, aged between 18 and 65 and all from Bristol, early on Sunday at the popular resort of Malia and a prosecutor charged them with exposing themselves in public and offending religious symbols. “They were dressed like nuns, carrying crosses, but wearing thongs under their skirts and showing people their bottoms and the rest,” a police official said.
■FRANCE
Cuckolded man attacks rival
A policeman has been charged with “a barbarous act of torture and mutilation” after he lopped off his wife’s lover’s genitals with a box cutter, Strasbourg prosecutors said on Monday. The 43-year-old father-of-five faces a maximum of 30 years in jail and is on suicide watch. Prosecutors said the policeman went over to his wife’s lover’s house in Reichshoffen on Saturday, knocked his 54-year-old rival senseless, dragged him into his garage and emasculated him. The policeman told neighbors to call an ambulance and then turned himself in.
■CZECH REPUBLIC
Perks include free surgery
An understaffed Prague clinic has signed up nurses by offering breast jobs, liposuction and tummy tucks as a bonus. Nurses, doctors and secretaries who sign up with the small private clinic for three years can choose their free plastic surgery. “It has been a success,” said Jiri Schweitzer, a manager at the Iscare clinic, adding the clinic was now fully staffed and had to reject dozens of applicants. Petra Kalivodova, a 31-year-old nurse who has been working at the clinic for four years, has had a breast implant — the most popular choice among nurses — so she underwent liposuction for her signing on perk. The nation’s health system needs about 6,000 nurses in addition to the 90,000 it already employs, official data shows.
■FRANCE
‘Tour de prisoners’ set
Close to 200 prisoners will cycle around the country next month, watched by scores of guards on bicycles, in the first penal version of the Tour de France, authorities said on Monday. The 196 prisoners will cycle in a pack and breakaway sprints will not be allowed. They will be accompanied by 124 guards and prison sports instructors. “It’s a kind of escape for us, a chance to break away from the daily reality of prison,” said Daniel, a 48-year-old prisoner in Nantes, at the official launch of the event. “If we behave well, we might be able to get released earlier, on probation.” The prisoners’ Tour will take them 2,300km, starting in Lille on June 4 and stopping in 17 towns before ending in Paris.
■SOMALIA
Hostages make appeal
A Canadian reporter and an Australian photographer held hostage for nine months said they are in poor health and want more help from their governments to secure their release. Freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and photographer Nigel Brennan spoke to a reporter in Mogadishu by phone for five minutes on Sunday from an undisclosed location.
■MEXICO
Flu survivor may be honored
Edgar Hernandez, the kindergartner who became the first person known to have contracted the A(H1N1) virus, may soon have a statue erected in his honor in the mountain village where he lives. Governor Fidel Herrera of Veracruz said the statue of Edgar, 5, could help attract tourists to La Gloria, a village where hundreds of residents came down with flu-like symptoms beginning in late winter, in what experts say may have been the beginning of the spread of the new flu strain. In an interview with reporters on Sunday, Herrera likened the statue to the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium, the sculpture of a little boy urinating in a fountain. Edgar contracted swine flu in early March but recovered after a few days.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Musicians defend hacker
Musicians from such diverse groups as Pink Floyd and Boyzone have joined forces in a last-ditch campaign to halt the extradition to the US of London computer hacker Gary McKinnon. The family and friends of McKinnon, who has Asperger’s syndrome, hope that a campaign also supported by London Mayor Boris Johnson will finally bear fruit. Next month, McKinnon will appear again in a judicial review over the decision to send him to stand trial in the US for hacking into the US Department of Defense and NASA computer systems in search of information about UFOs. To help the case, Graham Nash authorized a reworking of a song he wrote while part of Crosby, Stills and Nash, while David Gilmour, formerly of Pink Floyd, is producing the new recording of the song. Boyzone singer Keith Duffy has also expressed his support, saying: “As the parent of a child with autism I know only too well that getting support at the right time can be crucial.”
■UNITED STATES
Toddler turns pool shark
A New York toddler still in diapers has a growing reputation as a pool shark with a mean bank shot — even though he has to stand on a chair to reach the table. The parents of two-year-old Keith O’Dell have posted videos of him on YouTube. The toddler is the youngest member of the American Pool Association. The son of pool-playing parents, the toddler recently traveled to Las Vegas to put on a demonstration for the association. His parents said pool was also teaching him colors and how to count.
■BRAZIL
Armed robbers surrender
Two armed men who held the passengers of a bus hostage in a suburb of Sao Paulo surrendered on Monday after lawyers they demanded arrived on the scene. The Globo News channel showed tactical police surrounding the minibus. Police Colonel Carlos Botelho said the assailants and police exchanged fire at the start of the two-hour drama, during which the bus’s ticket collector was wounded. The two men had boarded the bus to try to escape a police patrol that came upon them as they left a house they had robbed.
■MEXICO
Electoral candidate shot
An armed gang on Monday shot and injured an electoral candidate in the third such attack in the southwest since the weekend. The country is in campaign mode for July elections for federal lawmakers, six governors and more than 600 mayors. Unidentified attackers stopped parliamentary candidate Nicanor Adame and two others as they were traveling in a car in Guerrero state and shot at them, police said on Monday. The motive remained unclear.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese