■CHINA
Mine death toll reaches 33
Rescuers recovered five more bodies from a huge coal mine that flooded two weeks ago in the north, bringing the death toll in the disaster to 33, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The recovery of the bodies leaves five workers still unaccounted for in the unfinished Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province, which flooded on March 28. The flood had left 153 workers trapped underground, but 115 were rescued alive last week, raising hopes of finding more of the workers who were building the mine. However, those hopes have dimmed in recent days as officials have reported levels of harmful gases were building up in the colliery, hampering rescue efforts. Rescuers were still searching for the missing, Xinhua said, despite the risk from the gas and potential further flooding.
■CHINA
Lip-synching singers fined
Two singers have become the first people in the country to fall foul of new rules banning lip-synching nearly two years after widespread criticism of miming at the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony. The two young female singers were spotted lip-synching during a concert in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, last year, Xinhua news agency said on its Web site. “No signals were received from their microphones while the show was on,” it quoted an official with the local government’s cultural affairs office as saying. The two have been fined 50,000 yuan (US$7,329) each, Xinhua said. Feisty Internet users frequently blame famous singers of short-selling their fans by lip-synching on stage, but some have also wondered why these first fines were leveled against two almost unknown singers rather than more famous stars.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the