MALAYSIA
Textbook riles Indian party
An official says a high school text book that aims to emphasize the country’s racial harmony has riled the main ethnic Indian party by referring to the Hindu caste system. Malaysian Indian Congress Deputy President S. Subramaniam says the party wants the Education Ministry to withdraw the book Interlock or at least revoke portions that refer to the caste system. He said yesterday that the reference has hurt the minority Indians because they don’t want to be reminded of what they see as an outdated concept. The ministry says it will hear the party’s arguments before making a decision. The book is required reading for literature classes from this year.
JAPAN
Earthquake strikes north
A magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Niigata prefecture in the north, the Meteorological Agency said on its Web site. The quake hit at 1:45pm local time yesterday at a depth of 10km about 80km north of the city of Niigata and 330km north of Tokyo, the agency said. There were no immediate reports of damage. The epicenter was about 150km from Tokyo Electric Power Co’s -Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world’s largest, which reopened in November after it was damaged during a magnitude 6.8 quake in July 2007. Officials at Tokyo Electric were not available for comment and spokesman Katsuya Uchino did not answer calls to his mobile phone. The country, which experiences about one-fifth of the world’s earthquakes annually, lies in a zone where four tectonic plates meet and shift.
JAPAN
Rice cakes kill six
Six people choked to death and five were in a serious condition after eating traditional glutinous mochi rice cakes to celebrate the New Year in Tokyo, fire department officials said yesterday. The victims, in their 70s or older, died of suffocation over the weekend after eating the New Year delicacy, the fire department said. During the New Year period, one of the country’s biggest holidays, families traditionally cook ozouni soup and put the sticky rice cakes in the vegetable broth. “Please be aware that mochi, which is so sticky, may cause suffocation if you swallow mochi without chewing it well,” the fire department said in a statement. The fire department is advising people, especially the elderly and infants, to cut mochi into small pieces before eating it. Every year, several people in the country, mostly older people or infants, die after choking on rice cakes.
ISRAEL
Palestinian ban extended
The country on Sunday extended for six months a ban preventing Palestinians married to Israelis immigrating to the Jewish state, the prime minister’s office said in a statement. “The ministerial committee for security affairs decided tonight [Sunday] to extend for six months a text on family unification, which expired on Dec. 31,” a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. That extension until June 30 denies Palestinians the right to acquire citizenship or resident status through marriage. The so-called Family Unification provision has been the subject of an outcry from leftist movements and groups representing the country’s Arab minority, who charge the ban is “inhumane” and “racist.” The ministerial committee also asked the justice minister “to work toward early finalization of a law on family unification, which will meet the national security and long-term interests of the government of Israel,” the statement added.
SPAIN
Man nearly bins fortune
A lottery player nearly lost 9 million euros (US$12 million) in winnings after tossing tickets in the garbage, only to later discover they were winners, Spanish media said on Sunday. Ignacio Gonzalez, a lottery ticket vendor in the country’s northern Basque Country, was stunned to discover on Friday that the number he had played along with 14 friends — 48104 — had come up in a charity draw run by a Spanish organization for the blind, ONCE. However, Gonzalez’s euphoria quickly turned to despair when he could not find the winning tickets. “The New Year was off to a very good start, with a shower of millions, but on the other hand I couldn’t find the tickets,” Gonzalez told Basque radio station Radio Euskadi. After a desperate search of his home and with hope running out, Gonzalez ran out to his neighborhood garbage bin. “Without thinking about it for two seconds and in front of stunned passers-by, he dumped over the container” and began rifling through its contents, newspaper ABC wrote on Sunday. Mixed in with the garbage, Gonzalez finally found the winning tickets, no worse for wear, allowing he and his friends to collect a little more than 600,000 euros each in winnings. After the close call, Gonzalez admitted that he feared his friends would have “crucified” him if he had lost the tickets for good.
RUSSIA
Opposition leader jailed
One of the nation’s most prominent opposition leaders has been sentenced to 15 days in jail after being arrested at a New Year’s Eve protest rally. Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy Russian prime minister during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, was among 68 people arrested at an unsanctioned rally in a central Moscow square. He and other protesters gathered on the opposite side of the square from an authorized protest. Nemtsov was sentenced on Sunday for failure to follow police orders, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. News agency Interfax quoted Nemtsov as saying the court refused to allow police and TV video recordings from the scene to be used as evidence. Nemtsov is one of the Kremlin’s fiercest critics and a leader of Russia’s fledgling Solidarity movement.
IRAN
Valentine’s Day banned
Cupid beware: Iran says it’s cracking down on symbols of Valentine’s Day. The annual homage to romance on Feb. 14 has become popular in recent years in Iran and other places in the Middle East, but Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency reported on Sunday that a state directive now bans any cards, gifts, teddy bears or other tokens of the day — which tradition says is named after an early Christian martyr. The backlash in the Islamic Republic is part of a drive against the spread of Western culture. Other Muslim countries have also sought to stamp out Valentine’s Day, but it is celebrated widely in nearby places, such as Dubai.
UNITED STATES
Dad to stand trial for murder
An Iraqi immigrant from the Phoenix suburb of Glendale accused of killing his 20-year-old daughter because he believed she had become too Westernized is scheduled to stand trial this month. Fifty-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki is accused of slamming his Jeep into Noor Almaleki in October 2009. She laid in a coma for two weeks before dying of her injuries, causing outrage across the country about the so-called honor killing. Another woman was injured. If convicted, he will face life in prison, since prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty. The trial is set to begin on Jan. 18.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was