■ CHINA
Mass relocation under way
The nation has launched its biggest relocation program since the Three Gorges Dam, with 330,000 residents set to be moved to new homes to make way for a water project that will serve thirsty Beijing. The first group of 499 villagers was moved on Wednesday in Hubei Province and a total of 60,000 people were to be relocated by Sept. 30, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. The rest will be moved by 2014, it said. The South-North Water Diversion Project will siphon water from the Yangtze River to serve drought-prone northern cities such as Beijing and Tianjin.
■CHINA
N Korea offered help
Beijing said yesterday it had offered to help Pyongyang tackle cross-border crime — two months after North Korean soldiers killed three suspected Chinese smugglers, raising tensions between the allies. Beijing said it had handed over military equipment to North Korea’s National Defense Commission during a visit by Deputy Chinese Public Security Minister Liu Jing (劉京) on Sunday. The statement gave no details of what type of equipment China had provided or which type of crimes could be targeted.
■ SRI LANKA
Minister fired for ‘abuse’
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has removed Deputy Highway Minister Mervyn Silva after he tied a government worker to a tree for failing to attend a mosquito eradication program, a statement on the government’s Web site on Tuesday said. Silva tied the man to a tree last week in his electorate in Kelaniya on the outskirts of Colombo in an incident widely shown on television. Labor unions and opposition politicians have strongly criticized Silva. Silva told a news conference the worker signed a letter saying he had asked Silva to tie him to the tree. Colleagues of the man disputed that. The worker has not been available for comment.
■ PHILIPPINES
Fishermen found alive
Twelve Filipino fishermen reported missing in rough seas have been found alive after they managed to keep their sinking boat afloat. The fisherman went missing on Tuesday after it was thought their boat went down. However, coast guard chief Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said the crew was actually able to pump water out of the boat and stay afloat long enough to reach nearby shores.
■ SRI LANKA
Iranians nabbed over drugs
Police arrested three Iranian men and seized a haul of methamphetamine with an estimated street value of tens of millions of dollars, a spokesman said yesterday. Two men traveling from Qatar were arrested on Wednesday when customs officers at the international airport found more than 8kg of the narcotic, Prishantha Jayakody said. Questioning of the men led to the arrest in Colombo of another Iranian man, who also had 8kg of the drug on him.
■ BANGLADESh
More frogs being married
Farmers in the parched district of Sadullahpur are marrying off frogs in a desperate bid to bring on monsoon rains and protect their crops, local officials said on Wednesday. The nation suffered its driest July in decades, prompting farmers to turn to the centuries-old rain-making ritual of celebrating frog marriages, officials said. “There have been lot of frog marriages as there has been hardly any rainfall here even though it’s monsoon season,” Sadullahpur District administrator Ariful Haq said.
■ RUSSIA
Ceremonies mark disaster
Navy ships were flying flags at half-mast and memorial ceremonies were held across the nation to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster. The Kursk suffered two powerful explosions and sank during naval maneuvers in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, 2000, killing its crew of 118. Memorial ceremonies were held yesterday at the northern submarine base of Vidyayevo where the Kursk was based and other navy bases and Russian cities.
■FRANCE
Chef kept in freezer
A woman has admitted killing her partner, a retired chef, and preserving his body in a freezer for two years, prosecutors in Lyon said. Guylene Collober, 51, confessed to fatally punching her 71-year-old companion Jean-Francois Poinard, in November 2008, prosecutor Marc Desert said. She had earlier claimed that Poinard may have been killed by racketeers. Desert described Collober as a person with “pathological tendencies, narcissistic, possessive and violent. She isolated her partner from his friends, his family, the neighbors,” he said. The body of the former restaurateur was found in the freezer during a search of his home, Desert said.
■MOLDOVA
Russia bans wine imports
Russia has banned imports of wine from Moldova, according to an order circulated by its customs service. Winemaking accounts for about one fifth of the economy and employs more than a quarter of all workers in Moldova and the Russian ban cuts off producers from their biggest market. “[Russia’s] Federal Customs Service hereby bans imports of the following products: wines ... wine materials, cognacs produced in the Republic of Moldova,” Russia’s customs service said in a document. It cited concerns about Moldovan wines’ quality which had been voiced by Russia’s consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor. Acting Moldovan President Mihai Ghimpu angered the Kremlin in June by proclaiming June 28 “Soviet occupation day.” Moldova’s constitutional court has since cancelled the decree. Shortly afterwards, Rospotrebnadzor said the quality of wine imported from Moldova had deteriorated and it should be used to “paint fences.”
■ISRAEL
Archeologists strike gold
Archeologists say they have uncovered the heaviest and most valuable gold coin ever found in Israel. The 2,200-year-old coin weighs 28g and was found on June 22, Wednesday’s statement from the antiquities authority said. It said the coin is six times the weight of most others from that era. Donald Ariel, head of the antiquities authority coin department, said the coin dates to back to the rule of the Seleucid Empire, though it was minted by the rival Egyptian Ptolemies.
■ZIMBABWE
Controversial gems sold
Zimbabwe auctioned 900,000 carats of rough gems on Wednesday from a diamond field where human rights groups say soldiers killed 200 people, raped women and enslaved children. It was the first public sale of diamonds from the Marange field in eastern Zimbabwe since international regulators imposed a ban in November under rules designed to screen out conflict gems. The auction in Harare went ahead after the gems were certified as conflict-free by Abbey Chikane, a monitor for the Kimberley Process that oversees trade in diamonds. Chikane had established that the mines were operating according to “minimum international standards.”
■ CANADA
Waters backs Iranian lyrics
Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters has no qualms about giving Toronto-based band permission to tinker with his group’s classic Another Brick in the Wall for use as an anthem for young Iranians. Blurred Vision, fronted by two exiled Iranian brothers, has reworked the lyrics to express the resentment felt by young people toward the Tehran government. One well-known verse was changed to “Hey, Ayatollah, leave those kids alone!” Waters said he encourages artists to use the song to resist all forms of oppression, adding that he sees the band as playing a vital part in “the resistance to a regime that is both repressive and brutal.” The video for the Iranian version, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Babak Payami, has been seen by more than 235,000 viewers on YouTube.
■ UNITED STATES
Identity theft kingpin nabbed
A man the government deems one of the worst offenders among sellers of stolen financial data was arrested in Nice, France, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday. Moscow resident Vladislav Horohorin, 27, a dual Israeli and Ukrainian national, was arrested on Saturday in Nice as he prepared to board a flight to Moscow, the department said. Horohorin was indicted by a US federal grand jury in November last year on charges of access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. If convicted on all counts, he could face 12 years in prison and fines of US$500,000. The suspect is believed to be one of the founders of CarderPlanet, a criminal Internet forum on which stolen credit card data are sold.
■ MEXICO
Kidnapped journalist freed
A journalist kidnapped nearly two weeks ago in Zacatecas state has been released by his captors and taken to hospital, Reporters Without Borders spokeswoman Balbina Flores said on Wednesday. Few details were available about the July 29 kidnapping of Ulises Gonzalez Garcia of the La Opinion weekly. “His family doesn’t want to talk about it at present,” Flores said. Garcia’s kidnapping followed that of four other journalists on July 26 in Durango State. Two of those journalists were released days later by their captors and the two others were rescued in a bloodless police raid.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Police face assault charges
The Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday that four police officers will face criminal charges over an alleged attack on a terrorism suspect in 2003. The men are accused of assaulting Babar Ahmad, a 36-year-old computer specialist, accused by the US of running Web sites used to raise money for terrorists, and of supplying them with gas masks and night vision goggles. The European Court of Human Rights has halted his extradition to the US until it makes a ruling next year on his case. The police officers will appear at a London court on Sept. 22 on a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm. Last year, London police paid out about US$95,000 in damages over the case.
■UNITED STATES
‘Boomer the Dog’ denied
A Pittsburgh judge has denied a man’s petition to legally change his name to Boomer the Dog. Forty-four-year-old Gary Guy Mathews says he filed for the name change in June because he’s a fan of a short-lived 1980 to 1982 NBC television series Here’s Boomer, which featured a dog that rescued people. Common Pleas Judge Ronald Folino said the name change could cause confusion in business and public records, and confuse an emergency dispatcher during a crisis.
‘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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in