■JAPAN
Soldiers die in boat accident
Five off-duty soldiers were killed and another was missing yesterday after their boat capsized off Hokkaido, officials said. The Self-Defense Forces members were night fishing on an offshore breakwater 500m from Tomakomai port, southern Hokkaido, late on Friday, a local coastguard official said. As the weather turned bad, they tried to leave the breakwater on a boat but it suddenly turned over, throwing them into the sea, the official said. Another soldier who was with the six managed get back to the breakwater by himself, while rescue operators found five people floating near the breakwater, who were later confirmed dead. “We will soon send a patrol boat out there to find the remaining one,” the official said.
■CHINA
Police crack down on porn
Police detained some 3,470 people so far this year during a crackdown on online pornography and closed thousands of pornographic Web sites, state media said yesterday. Xinhua news agency, citing the Ministry of Public Security, said “more than 1.25 million items of online lewd content and nearly 7,000 pornographic Web sites and columns” had been removed from the Internet this year.
■CHINA
Officials’ illegal funds seized
The top official in charge of anti-corruption said that a crackdown found US$1.5 billion in illegal funds held by Chinese Communist Party and government officials, Xinhua news agency reported. He Guoqiang (賀國強), head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said 22,884 so-called small coffers had been discovered since a campaign began in June, Xinhua reported. Some 270 officials have been administratively punished for holding such funds and 81 had been prosecuted, Xinhua said.
■THAILAND
Snipers guard artifacts
Police snipers are protecting Buddhist artifacts at a museum after a spate of robberies including one where thieves stole nearly 100 statues and works dating back 1,000 years. Security was stepped up on Friday at the Chawsamphraya National Museum, which houses collections from the oldest temples in Ayutthaya, a Siamese kingdom founded in 1350 with many remaining ruins that are now listed as a World Heritage Site. Ayutthaya police Colonel Sombat Chuchaiya said a special five-man force including snipers will remain at least through Dec. 20. Temples in Ayutthaya, 50km north of Bangkok, and elsewhere in Thailand have reported small-scale robberies in recent weeks. The Khon Kaen National Museum in the northeast was the latest one hit.
■THAILAND
Bogus passport ring busted
The authorities arrested five people for producing and smuggling more than 300 fake EU passports and other official European documents, officials said on Friday. They said police have seized from the group more than 300 bogus passports, produced locally but made to look like official documentation from 14 EU countries including Britain, France and Belgium. The Department of Special Investigation said the suspects, all arrested since Aug. 21, were 32-year-old Pakistani man Azad Said Giyani and a 35-year-old Sri Lankan man, known to be a Tamil Tiger separatist. A 43-year-old Thai woman was arrested for assisting them. A 38-year-old man from Myanmar’s ethnic Rohingya minority was arrested on suspicion of producing the passports and a 28-year-old Thai woman is also being held for helping him.
■CYPRUS
Ex-president’s body stolen
Thieves dug up the grave of former president Tassos Papadopoulos during the night and stole his corpse from inside the coffin, reports said on Friday. State TV interrupted its normal programming through the morning to bring live reports and reaction to the desecration. A member of Papadopoulos’ personal guard found the grave open when he went to light a vigil candle at around 8am, state radio reported. Papadopoulos had political enemies during his lifetime but leaders from across the spectrum united in condemning the crime, which came the day before a memorial service was due to be held to mark the first anniversary of his death.
■ITALY
Police recover artifacts
Police have broken up a ring of looters who raided tombs for ancient artifacts and exported them illegally to countries including the US, officials said on Friday. During more than a year of investigations, authorities recovered nearly 1,700 statues, vases and other artifacts dating from pre-Roman times to the heyday of the empire. Police flagged 19 people for possible investigation by prosecutors. The artifacts were mainly dug out from tombs in the areas around Naples and Venice and included a bronze bust of the emperor Augustus, customs police in Rome said.
■FRANCE
‘Con’ man to stand trial
A court on Friday ordered a photographer accused of bilking the nation’s richest woman out of 1 billion euros (US$1.5 billion) in cash and art to stand trial for exploitation. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers has waged a two-year legal campaign against the man she accuses of taking advantage of Liliane Bettencourt, her 87-year-old mother and the heiress to the cosmetics giant L’Oreal, including a failed attempt to have her mother put under court-ordered supervision. On Friday, a court ruled that Francois-Marie Barnier, 62, will be tried on April 16 to April 17 for exploitation.
■CZECH REPUBLIC
Rare rhinos return to wild
A zoo is to transfer four endangered Northern White rhinos to a Kenyan reserve in a last-ditch attempt to ensure the survival of the species. “We must offer them this last chance, in their natural environment in Africa,” said Dana Holeckova, director of the Dvur-Kralove zoo. Experts said there are only eight remaining Northern White rhinos, a subspecies of the White Rhino — worldwide. All live in captivity — six at Dvur-Kralove and two at San Diego Zoo in the US. It is hoped that returning the animals to the wild will affect the hormonal levels of the female rhinos, allowing them to breed, Holeckova said.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Workers protest ‘racism’
About 20,000 workers at the second-biggest retailer Pick n Pay went on strike on Friday in protest against alleged racism in the grocery chain. An estimated 3,000 workers, clad in red T-shirts and carrying placards with slogans such as “Pick n Pay are Masters of Slave Trade” and “Wage Gap is Racism,” gathered at the group’s head office in Johannesburg to deliver their demands. The workers aligned to the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union alleged on placards that CEO Nick Badminton had once said that “Blacks Take Long To Develop.” Pick n Pay has denied the charge. Among the union’s demands was that the firm address the wage gap between black and white workers and do away with the fast tracked promotions for white “casual” staff over experienced black employees.
■MEXICO
Attacks kill 11
A series of attacks on police has killed 11 people and wounded 23 more in western Michoacan state. A spokesman for joint military-police operations says six federal officers and five gunmen died in the shootouts, which ran from late Wednesday into the following day in several towns. Rafael Aviles says 23 officers were injured, including 16 who remain hospitalized. Authorities were searching on Friday for three federal agents believed kidnapped.
■CUBA
US worker detained
Authorities have detained a US government contract worker, who was distributing cellphones, laptops and other communications equipment in Cuba on behalf of the administration of US President Barack Obama, the New York Times reported late on Friday. Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said the contractor, who works for a company based in the Washington suburbs, was detained on Dec. 5. They said the US Interests Section in Havana was awaiting Cuba’s response to a request for consular access to the man, who was not identified, the report said.
■BRAZIL
French tourists arrested
Three French tourists risk up to five years in prison for their role in a row on board a plane that turned physical, the French consulate said on Friday. The two men, aged 63 and 60, and one woman, aged 54, have been charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft according to the prosecution charge sheet submitted to a judge, a consulate diplomat said. Efforts were being made to release the three on bail of US$700 each, the diplomat said. The three were arrested early on Monday after a dispute with flight attendants on a Brazilian TAM airlines flight that was delayed for hours by a technical problem as it prepared to take off from Sao Paulo for Paris. They and the rest of their group of around 20 elderly French vacationers, who had been heading home after a two-week Atlantic cruise, panicked at the malfunction and demanded to be put on another flight.
■UNITED STATES
Kitten hitches ride
A man says a three-month-old kitten apparently hitched a cold 200km ride in the wheel well of his SUV. Marc Lichty left Olympia, Washington, after finishing a day of work on Wednesday. He heard meowing when he stopped at a rest stop along the way home but couldn’t see a cat, KPTV-TV reported. When he reached his home in Tualatin, Oregon, he heard the meowing again and grabbed a flashlight. Sure enough, he says, “the cat was up underneath in the spare tire spot.” Daughter Jenna helped coax the passenger out with a bit of salmon. The animal had no collar or microchip and the Lichtys say they’ll keep it.
■ARGENTINA
‘Blond Angel’ on trial
A former navy captain, dubbed the Blond Angel of Death, went on trial on Friday for the kidnap and murder of two French nuns during the country’s military dictatorship. Alfredo Astiz, 58, is charged along with 18 other soldiers of carrying out the killings in the notorious Naval Mechanics School, which became a symbol of the violence of the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship. Among the most infamous crimes Astiz is accused of is the murder of nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, who were kidnapped on Dec. 8 and Dec. 10, 1977. Astiz is also accused of a role in the disappearance of dozens of others.
‘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