VIETNAM
‘Jasmine’ dissident released
A dissident who called for a Middle East-style uprising has been released on bail after his arrest for allegedly urging the overthrow of the regime, a report said yesterday. Nguyen Dan Que was allowed to go home on Sunday because he had cooperated with police and was in relatively poor health, the state-linked Tuoi Tre newspaper said, adding that Que would still face further questioning. Que was arrested at his home in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday, the official Vietnam News said. During a raid on his house, police allegedly seized documents related to anti-government activities, including an “appeal to all people” that called on the public to rise up against the government, the report said.
CHINA
Former minister investigated
Former minister of railways Liu Zhijun (劉志軍) is under investigation for allegedly taking more than 800 million yuan (US$122 million) in kickbacks linked to rail construction projects, state press reported yesterday. Liu, who was sacked last month, allegedly took payouts for doling out contracts for the rapid expansion of the booming high-speed railway system, amounting to up to 4 percent of each deal, the Global Times said. Since Liu became rail minister in 2003, the country’s spending on high-speed rail construction has skyrocketed, with investment surpassing 700 billion yuan last year, the paper said.
SRI LANKA
Fighter jets collide
Two fighter jets collided and crashed yesterday while practicing for an exhibition marking the air force’s 60th anniversary. The fate of the pilots was not immediately known, officials said. A rescue team has been sent to the western district of Gampaha, where the two Israeli-built Kfir jets went down, air force spokesman Group Captain Andrew Wijesuriya said. Police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody said no casualties or damage to property had been reported so far.
NEPAL
Alleged rhino poacher nabbed
Police have arrested an alleged mastermind poacher on suspicion of killing 16 endangered rhinos over six years, officers in Kathmandu said on Monday. Kajiman Praja, 32, was held on Saturday along with four female family members in Waling, 260km west of the capital, after a tip-off from the WWF conservation group. “He is our ‘most wanted’ poacher and his family was involved in rhino poaching in Chitwan National Park,” Rajendra Singh Bhandari, chief of the police’s Central Investigation Bureau said. Rhino horn is highly valued as an aphrodisiac in China, with each one fetching as much as US$14,000 on the international black market.
MARSHALL ISLANDS
‘No Chinese’ ban ended
The chief justice ruled yesterday that a ban by government officials on legal aid for Chinese citizens was discriminatory and illegal. The existence of the ban emerged during a hearing for Wang Xincheng, who has been charged with obstructing an immigration official on his arrival in December last year. At a hearing on Monday, assistant public defender Karotu Tiba told Chief Justice Carl Ingram he could not represent Wang because he had been instructed his office no longer took Chinese clients. Chief Public Defender Russell Kun had issued the ban after he was forced to withdraw from representing a Chinese woman charged with prostitution in January because he had previously given legal advice to two Chinese women who were testifying for the prosecution.
LEBANON
Hariri warns on Hezbollah
Outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri said on Monday that Hezbollah’s weapons are a threat to the country’s security. The Shiite militant group maintains its own arsenal, which it says is necessary to ward off threats from Israel. Hariri said the weapons could be used against Lebanese as they were in May 2008, when Hezbollah gunmen swept through Sunni neighborhoods. More than 80 people were killed, pushing the country to the brink of civil war. Hezbollah and its allies toppled Hariri’s Western-backed government last month by walking out of the government.
UNITED KINGDOM
Terror plotter convicted
A jury convicted a former British Airways computer specialist of plotting with US-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to blow up an airplane in an attack intended to kill hundreds of people. Rajib Karim, a 31-year-old Bangladeshi man, was convicted on Monday of four counts of engaging in preparation for terrorist attacks. He already had pleaded guilty to five other terrorism offenses, but denied plotting an attack in Britain. Prosecutors said Karim used his position at the airline to conspire with al-Awlaki, who is thought to be hiding in Yemen. Prosecutors said that in heavily encrypted exchanges, Al-Awlaki quizzed Karim about details of security flaws and urged him to train as a flight attendant to assist plans to use suicide bombers or mail bombs to down US-bound flights. Karim is due to be sentenced on March 18.
UNITED KINGDOM
Breast milk dessert seized
Westminster City Council officials said on Monday they had confiscated ice cream made with human breast milk from a London shop amid concerns the dessert was unsafe. A spokeswoman said the council was responding to two complaints from the public over whether a shop should be selling edibles made from other people’s bodily fluids and awaiting guidance from the Food Standards Agency. The official said the ice cream, marketed as “Baby Gaga” and launched last week, is being tested with the full cooperation of The Icecreamists, the parlor marketing the dessert. The firm has said that the milk was screened in line with blood donor requirements before being pasteurized and churned together with vanilla pods and lemon zest.
FRANCE
Actress Girardot dies
Annie Girardot, the perky, gravelly-voiced actress who became one of the nation’s most enduring and acclaimed modern stars, died on Monday at age 79. Girardot, with awards for both film and theater in a decades-long career, had suffered for years from Alzheimer’s disease and died in a Paris hospital. During her career, Girardo performed in more than 100 films, and won France’s coveted Cesar award three times — in 1976 for best actress for her role in Jean-Louis Bertuccelli’s Doctor Francoise Gailland, for best supporting actress for Les Miserables in 1995, and for playing a possessive mother of a musician in Michael Haneke’s Le Pianiste in 2001.
FRANCE
No new three-stars
The Michelin Red Guide has added more than 50 restaurants to its annual listing of premier French eateries, but none got its top grade. For the first time in nearly a generation, its inspectors couldn’t find any newcomers for its ultra-elite list of three-star restaurants. Michelin said that reflected diners’ shift to favoring more value-oriented and casual bistro-style eatings. The guidebook goes on sale tomorrow.
CANADA
Diva to donate Libyan cash
Pop singer Nelly Furtado says she was paid US$1 million to perform for members of Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s “clan” in 2007, but will now donate the money to charity. Other stars who reportedly performed for Qaddafi’s family have kept mum. Beyonce and Usher reportedly performed at a New Year’s Eve party for Qaddafi’s son Muatassim on the Caribbean island of St Barts, while R&B singer Mariah Carey was hired to sing at a previous New Year’s bash.
CANADA
Bomb threat man arrested
A 35-year-old man was arrested on Monday morning for threatening to bomb Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s official residence, police said. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raided an apartment in Gatineau on the Quebec side of the national capital after an anonymous caller threatened to set off explosives at 24 Sussex Drive. “There was no immediate threat to the prime minister or his family,” RCMP Constable Julie Morel said in a statement. The occupant of the apartment, who reportedly threw objects at officers when they arrived at his door, was charged with uttering threats and assaulting a police officer.
UNITED STATES
Last WWI veteran dies
The last US Word War I veteran, who lied about his age to get into the military and fight, has died at the age of 110. A spokesman for the family of Frank Buckles said he had died peacefully in his home near Charles Town, West Virginia, of natural causes early on Sunday. US President Barack Obama on Monday ordered flags flown at half-mast at the White House and other federal buildings to pay tribute to Buckles. The same sign of respect in Buckles’ memory will be paid at US military installations around the world, Obama said.
UNITED STATES
Actress Jane Russell dies
Movie star Jane Russell, who became a controversial Hollywood sex symbol, died on Monday at the age of 89, her family said. Russell, best known as the buxom star of 1940s and 1950s movies, died of respiratory failure at her home in Santa Maria, central California, her family said. Multimillionaire producer-industrialist Howard Hughes discovered Russell and put her in her first movie, The Outlaw, which stuck her with the sexpot image based on her bosom, the bra for which reportedly was size 38-D. In 1953 Russell paired with Marilyn Monroe in her biggest hit, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
PANAMA
Pirate cannons found
Six cannons found on a reef off the country’s Caribbean coast last year could be from the famed pirate Henry Morgan’s ship, which targeted the area in the 17th century, researchers said on Monday. An international team of underwater archaeologists working on the Lajas reef found the cannons in August last year in a spot not far from where a flotilla led by Morgan ran aground in 1671. The pirates had wrested the San Lorenzo castle from Spanish troops and were trying to get to Panama City to loot it. “In 1671 the boat Satisfaction, belonging to the English pirate Henry Morgan, sunk on the Lajas reef,” said Ernesto Boyd, who leads Patronato Panama Viejo, a private group that looks to protect national patrimony. “So it is presumed that the cannons belong to the pirate.” Scientists said it could take another two years to confirm whether the guns were Morgan’s.
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