IRAN
Legal blinding postponed
The court-ordered blinding of a local man who hurled acid in the face of university classmate Ameneh Bahrami has been postponed, the ISNA news agency said yesterday, without giving a source. “The execution of qesas [retribution in kind] of Majid [Movahedi] ... has been postponed to an unknown date,” the news agency said on its Web site. Movahedi was sentenced to be blinded in both eyes in February 2009 for hurling acid in the face of Ameneh after she repeatedly spurned his offer of marriage.
MALAYSIA
Two arrested for drugs
Customs officials said yesterday that they arrested two Iranian men and seized heroin worth US$12.6 million in the country’s biggest drug haul of the year. Central Selangor customs director Azis Yacub told state media that officials seized 278 packages of the drug during checks on five containers filled with cement bags at Port Klang on April 28. Azis told local papers that if the heroin had been processed, its street value would have been three times as much. There has been a steep increase in the number of alleged Iranian drug traffickers arrested in the country recently, with 138 caught from January to October last year compared with 16 in the whole of 2009.
VIETNAM
Fraud gang arrested
Police have arrested 56 foreigners on suspicion of international telephone and Internet fraud, state media said yesterday. The 45 men and 11 women, identified only as Asian, were arrested in two separate locations in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday after raids by police, said the state-run Nhan Dan [People] newspaper. The gang pretended to be police, customs and tax officials to access the information and account passwords of both locals and foreigners in order to steal their money, the report said. Police said they had confiscated 17 laptops, 15 Wi-Fi transmitters, 103 telephone sets, mobile phones and other equipment. Last year, at least 130 Chinese and Taiwanese people were arrested in the country on similar allegations.
INDONESIA
Two terror suspects killed
Police killed two terror suspects during a raid early yesterday, following the arrest of four suspected terrorists a day earlier. “The two men on a motorcycle tried to escape and opened fire on police personnel,” national police deputy spokesman I Ketut Untung Yoga Ana said, adding that the suspects were killed on the spot. The incident took place in Sukoharjo in Central Java Province at 1:15am. During the exchange of fire, one of the suspected terrorists shot dead a food seller the police said. Police have arrested dozens of suspects allegedly part of a new militant cell believed to have been behind a series of recent incidents, including book bombs which were sent to Muslim moderates and counter-terrorism officials.
ECUADOR
Correa would take polygraph
President Rafael Correa said he is prepared to submit to a lie-detector test to prove he did not accept money from Colombia’s FARC rebels in his 2006 election campaign. Reports that the campaign received at least US$100,000 have dogged the leftist president ever since incriminating electronic documents were found in the camp of a FARC commander killed in a 2008 Colombian raid. They were renewed this week in a report by a London think thank that said it saw testimony of a former FARC operative who claimed he spoke to Correa by phone three times about guerrilla assistance to the campaign.
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
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
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