■CHINA
Shenzhen mayor probed
The mayor of Shenzhen is being investigated in a growing graft probe linked to the billionaire head of the GOME electronics retail chain, a newspaper reported yesterday. Xu Zongheng (許宗衡) had been put under shuanggui — a form of detention imposed on party officials, given his alleged links to Huang Guangyu (黃光裕), the founder of GOME and once ranked the country’s richest man, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported citing several unnamed sources. “It [his detention] must have something to do with economic irregularities ... but it could also have something to do with a power struggle,” a government source was quoted as saying by the Post.
■HONG KONG
Pyramid scam breaks teen
A teenager has filed for bankruptcy after running up loans amounting to US$14,000 in a suspected pyramid scheme scam, a news report said yesterday. The 19-year-old borrowed the money from three credit companies in November after signing a contract with a company to distribute red wine, perfume and cosmetics. The money was intended to buy stock from the company but the girl, whose name was given as Hui, handed the money over to three fellow distributors, who have since disappeared. She did not receive any products. Hui sought help from Legislator Wong Kwok-hing (王國興) who accompanied her to the police to make a report, the report in the South China Morning Post said.
■AUSTRALIA
Rudd announces reshuffle
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced yesterday a minor Cabinet reshuffle, a day after replacing his defense minister. Detailing the changes in Brisbane, Rudd said former assistant treasurer Chris Bowen would join the Cabinet in a financial position. Brendan O’Connor would replace Bob Debus as minister of home affairs, Rudd said, and several other government figures would also take on new roles.
■MYANMAR
Child protesters freed
State media says authorities have released two women and four children detained after protesting outside the US embassy. The group was arrested on Thursday as they protested the detention of a man who is the boss of one woman and the husband of the other. He was reportedly detained for taking photographs of a shop. Such an action is liable to raise police suspicions in the military state. The Padauk Mye radio station reported yesterday that the women and children aged between five and 17 years have been freed. Protests are rare in the country.
■JAPAN
Chinese vice premier arrives
Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan (王岐山) arrived in Tokyo yesterday afternoon for high-level economic talks between the Asian powerhouses, an airport official said. Wang and Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone will co-chair the two countries’ second economic dialogue, which takes place today, government officials said. The one-day meeting in Tokyo is expected to cover the global financial crisis and ways to boost trade ties between the world’s No. 2 and No. 3 economies. Tokyo also wants to press Beijing to drop its plans to require certification of information technology (IT) products to be used by the government. The US, Japan and other major IT manufacturers fear China will use the process to learn trade secrets. The first dialogue was held in Beijing in December 2007.
■FRANCE
Wine critic ordered to trial
Influential US wine critic Robert Parker has been ordered to stand trial next month for allegedly defaming a former assistant, a judicial official said on Friday. The case centers on former assistant Hanna Agostini who co-authored a book in France with a title that translates as Robert Parker: Anatomy of a Myth. Agostini herself faces preliminary charges in Bordeaux involving alleged forgery in a wine-trafficking affair. She denies the allegations. A judicial official said that Parker was ordered last month to stand trial on July 10 for writing on his Internet site that Agostini “could end up stagnating in prison,” and for allegedly misrepresenting the penalties that she faces in that case.
■GREECE
Doctors warn against cola
Drinking several liters of cola-containing soft drinks per day can cause a chronic depletion of potassium in the body, leading to muscle weakness and even paralysis, Greek doctors said. While you might think that “excessive soft drink consumption at this level is so rare that it is not a public health issue, we have every reason to think that it is not rare,” writes the author of an accompanying editorial in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.
■IRAQ
Colbert ‘goes commando’
US comedian Stephen Colbert has arrived for a week to record special editions of his popular television show The Colbert Report, the US Army confirmed yesterday. Colbert’s trip is dubbed “Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando” in reference to the Operation Iraqi Freedom codename given to the 2003 US-led invasion of the country. His visit was organized by United Service Organizations (USO), which arranges entertainment and support for US troops overseas. “The USO counts this as military service, right?” Colbert said in a statement on the Comedy Central Web site. “I might want to run for office some day.” Colbert has scheduled interviews with several senior US military officers, including General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq. He will also interview Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.
■FRANCE
Victims’ relatives ‘harassed’
Relatives of some of the 228 people lost on the Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic last week are being “harassed” by lawyers in Brazil smelling a lucrative lawsuit, the head of a Brazilian bar association said on Friday. Both Brazilian lawyers and foreign attorneys flying in on tourist visas were targeting the grieving families being cared for in a Rio de Janeiro hotel, Wadih Damous, president of the city’s Order of Lawyers, said. The relatives were “victims of harassment by some lawyers offering their services, creating great consternation,” he said, warning of reprisals.
■ISRAEL
Clinton dismisses Bush deal
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed on Friday arguments that Israel and the administration of former US president George W. Bush had an understanding under which Israel could keep expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Clinton’s hard line suggests US President Barack Obama has no intention of relenting on his call for a settlement freeze by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose fragile, two-month old government could fall if he heeded it. The US wants Israel to keep its commitment under the 2003 “road map” peace plan to halt all settlement activity. Netanyahu on Monday defied the US demand, saying Israel would keep building in existing settlements.
■UNITED STATES
Watergate burglar dies at 92
Bernard Leon Barker, a Cuban-born CIA operative who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion and was later a Watergate burglar, died on Friday in Miami, Florida. He was 92. Barker died on Friday morning his stepdaughter, Kelly Andrad said. He appeared to have died from complications of lung cancer. Barker was one of five men who broke into the Watergate building in Washington in 1972. Barker and three others were recruited in Miami by CIA agent Howard Hunt, whom they had worked with a decade earlier in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. They were trying to plant a wiretap to gather information on former president Richard Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the upcoming presidential election, George McGovern. While the national spotlight faded from the burglars over the past few decades, their role in the affair made them well-known in Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban community. Barker’s own anti-Castro views never changed over the years, said his daughter, Marielena Harding. “His fight for true freedom continued to the end, and he was just sorry that he never got to see Cuba free,’’ Harding said.
■UNITED STATES
Man buys drugs with pig
It was a simpler sort of drug trade. Police in Syracuse, New York, say a man offered a slaughtered pig as partial payment for a bag of crack cocaine. They say two men were spotted making the deal on Thursday. Angelo Colon of Fulton was arrested on a misdemeanor drug possession charge and Omar Veliz faces a felony drug sale charge. Police say Colon paid half a pig and US$10 for a US$50 bag of crack. While officers were arresting the suspects, someone took the pig.
■HAITI
Boy shot during protest
Police injured a 10-year-old boy as they fired warning shots on Friday to control a protest entering its second day in Port-au-Prince. A reporter saw the boy get shot in his right shoulder. A bullet also grazed the cheek of a university student who was taken to the hospital. Another man was shot in the leg when an off-duty policeman fired at a crowd after being pelted with stones, Radio Metropole reported. Hundreds of university students are demanding that school officials reinstate courses and that the government keep its promise of raising the minimum wage. The boy was shot as supporters tried to loot a supermarket.
■UNITED STATES
Eatery hits back at woman
The Hawaiian Tropic Zone restaurant in New York’s Times Square is hitting back at a woman who says she was denied a job as a bikini-clad barmaid because her speech was too “ghetto.” Hawaiian Tropic’s lawyer James Rosenzweig asked a Manhattan judge Friday to dismiss 22-year-old Melody Morales’ discrimination lawsuit. The lawyer says staffers are salespeople and employers have the right to deny employment to inarticulate speakers. He says they are not a class protected from discrimination. Morales’ lawyer, Derek Smith, says the case is legitimate because it has racial undertones. Morales was born in Brooklyn to Dominican and Puerto Rican parents.
■UNITED STATES
Woman stuck in bathtub
A 90-year-old California woman survived three days stuck in her bathtub after becoming too weak to get out by herself, the Contra Costa Times reported on Friday. Shirley Madsen survived by drinking water from a rubber duck and continually adding hot water to stay warm until her family rescued her.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing