■CHINA
Lu Zhengcao dies at 106
The last of the country’s first group of generals under the Communist Party has died at the age of 106, state media said yesterday. Lu Zhengcao (呂正操), one of 55 senior officers promoted in 1955, when the People’s Republic of China first adopted ranks after the Communists came to power in 1949, died in Beijing on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency said. Born in Haicheng, Liaoning Province, Lu quit the rival Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to join the Communists in 1937 after the war against Japan broke out and led a force to fight the Japanese army in the north, Xinhua said. He had previously been an assistant to KMT General Chang Hsueh-liang (張學良), known as the “Young Marshal.”
■CHINA
Hot-air balloon crashes
Four Dutch tourists died yesterday when a hot-air balloon caught fire and crashed near the tourist city of Guilin, Guangxi Province, state media said. Five Dutch tourists and two local pilots were on board when they lost control of the balloon shortly after it took off near the popular backpacker town of Yangshuo, Xinhua news agency said. The balloon drifted over Maling Township, where it exploded and caught fire 150m above the ground, the agency said. Three men and one woman died in the crash while the fifth Dutch tourist and the pilots were taken to hospital for emergency treatment for unspecified injuries, local officials told the agency.
■AUSTRALIA
Bid to plug oil leak fails
A second attempt to plug a massive oil spill leaking from a rig off the northwest failed on Tuesday, but the operator said it hoped to try again within days. Up to 400 barrels of oil have been pumped into the Timor Sea each day since the West Atlas drilling rig began leaking on Aug. 21, forcing the evacuation of 69 workers, according to Bangkok-headed PTTEP Australasia. The company failed in its first attempt last week to fix the leak at the Montara well-head platform, some 250km off the coast. PTTEP Australasia director Jose Martins said the second failure was disappointing but that each attempt improved the chances of success.
■PHILIPPINES
Estrada to run for president
Former leader Joseph Estrada, ousted in a popular uprising in 2001 and later convicted of graft, said yesterday he would run again for president in next year’s elections. “Yes, I will run,” Estrada, 72, said, when asked to confirm local press reports of his decision. The former movie action star said he had chosen Jejomar Binay, the popular mayor of Manila’s Makati financial district and a leader of the political opposition, as his vice presidential candidate.
■NETHERLANDS
‘Greed alert’ developed
It’s said that greed pushes investors to buy stocks when they’re overpriced, while fear drives sales when stocks are bottoming out. Philips Electronics has teamed up with ABN Amro bank to develop a system to warn home traders when they’re about to make a decision to buy or sell stocks while feeling overly emotional. It’s called “The Rationalizer,” and a test model is on display at an innovation summit in Brussels this week. It consists of an “EmoBracelet” and an light-emitting “EmoBowl” that can be placed near the user’s computer. The bracelet supposedly feels emotional states and sends radio signals to the bowl. As the user’s feelings intensify, the bowl glows yellow, orange and finally red. Paul Iske, who works for ABN Amro bank proved especially useful for men. The device is not expected to be in stores anytime soon.
■RUSSIA
Tramp bags bottle fortune
A 63-year-old homeless man has gone from street life to stock market trader after collecting thousands of empty booze bottles for cash, a popular tabloid reported on Tuesday. Pictured in a majestic purple suit and matching violet jewelry, Leonid Konovalov told the Tvoi Den that he collected around 2,000 bottles a day over the past year.
■SPAIN
Six ETA members arrested
Police have arrested six senior members of Basque guerrillas ETA’s outlawed political wing, including the party leader, state radio RNE reported on Tuesday. An Interior Ministry spokesman said an operation against Batasuna senior members was underway, but did not give details. The radio said the six Batasuna officials were arrested on the orders of High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, including party leader Arnaldo Otegi, who has served jail sentences for crimes including praising terrorism. Meanwhile, French police arrested two suspected ETA members in southern France on Sunday as they were on their way to an arms cache.
■RUSSIA
Stalin libel case tossed out
Moscow’s Basmanny Court on Tuesday threw out a libel case brought by Josef Stalin’s grandson against a newspaper that said the leader had personally ordered the killings of thousands of Soviet citizens. Judge Alexandra Lopatkina ruled that the Novaya Gazeta had not smeared Stalin’s name and refused to award the 10 million roubles (US$340,000) that Yevgeny Dzhugashvili was seeking in damages from the paper. The decision was greeted with cheers by the newspaper’s supporters in court while a group of elderly Stalinists screamed “shame” and vowed to appeal. The grandson’s lawyers had argued that the Novaya Gazeta article — based on declassified Kremlin documents — had smeared Stalin’s name by saying he personally ordered the deaths of Soviet citizens. The newspaper’s chief defense lawyer, Genri Reznik, said the case showed that Russia had still not come to terms with Stalin’s legacy.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Outrage over police shooting
A proposed law change to beef up police firepower was not a “license to kill,” Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said on Tuesday amid an outcry over the shooting of civilians. Pretoria police on Sunday killed a woman and wounded two men after opening fire at a moving car mistaken for a hijacked vehicle. Driver Simon Mathibela told the Star newspaper that after the shooting, the police stopped to look at the car and its wounded occupants and then left without offering to help.
■CHILE
Cowgirls seek equal rights
Cowgirls used the country’s first-ever official women’s rodeo event to ask the national rodeo association to admit them into its ranks. “It is a sport in which we too can take part,” media quoted cowgirl Soledad Chavez as saying on Tuesday. “It is high time to end machismo in rodeo and to make room for us women.” Around 2,000 spectators gathered at the Santa Filomena de Colina stadium near Santiago on Monday to watch the event. Michelle Recart and Paola Jouannet won the competition.
■UNITED STATES
Fish killer sentenced
A Portland man who attacked his ex-girlfriend and impaled her pet fish this summer was sentenced to two years’ probation, a psychological evaluation and community service. Donald Earl Fite, 27, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to animal abuse and domestic violence assault. Court records said Sarah Harris had broken up with Fite, but returned to her apartment on July 25 to find him lying on her bed, saying he wanted to get back together. When she tried to leave, Fite grabbed her hair and tossed her against a bathtub. Harris fled and returned with an officer. They found her fish — a purple Siamese fighting fish — on the wood floor with a knife through it. Fite told police: “If she can’t have me, then she can’t have the fish.” Fite’s attorney, Tom Macnair, said killing the fish was a “low point” in his client’s life. “He is absolutely mortified and ashamed about what he did to the fish,” MacNair said in Multnomah County Circuit Court. Prosecutor Eric Zimmerman told Judge Eric Bergstrom that Harris plans to get a memorial tattoo of the fish and wanted Fite to pay for it. Bergstrom declined to make Fite pay for the tattoo.
■UNITED STATES
Utensil ‘sporks’ debate
A Delaware first-grader who faced a lengthy punishment for taking his favorite camping utensil to school — a combination folding knife, fork and spoon — got a reprieve on Tuesday night when the school board made a hasty change to its strict code of conduct. The seven-member Christina School Board voted to reduce the punishment for kindergartners and first-graders who take weapons to school or commit violent offenses to a suspension ranging from three to five days. Zachary Christie, 6, had faced 45 days in an alternative school for troublemakers after he took the utensil to school to eat lunch. The punishment was one of several in recent years that have sparked a national debate on whether schools have gone too far. It was not the first such case in the Christina School District. Last year, a fifth-grade girl was expelled after she brought a birthday cake to school and a serrated knife to cut it with.
■UNITED STATES
Cuban spy resentenced
A judge on Tuesday resentenced one of five members of the biggest Cuban spy ring broken up in the US to 22 years in jail, down from a life term that was deemed too harsh. Federal Judge Joan Lenard gave a sentence of 262 months and five years’ probation to Antonio Guerrero for gathering and relaying US military information to Cuba. Guerrero committed “very serious offenses against the US,” the judge said. “The government did not present evidence that the defendant obtained top secret information, but he worked to obtain such information,” Lenard said. Cast as heroes in Havana, the “Cuban Five” — Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino and Fernando Gonzalez — were arrested in 1998. Cuba regards them as political prisoners and has lobbied intensely for their release.
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
‘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
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