CHINA
Death penalty for bad food
The country’s top court has ordered capital punishment for food safety crimes that result in fatalities, as the nation battles a wave of scares over tainted foodstuffs. In a notice on Friday, the Supreme People’s Court urged harsher penalties for manufacturers who produce tainted foodstuffs and for food inspectors convicted of dereliction of duty. The order was issued after the country eliminated capital punishment for some economic crimes in February, as it moved to curb the use of the death penalty in a nation believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined. However, a wave of food scares seems to have prompted the harsher penalties as safety problems continue despite government promises to clean up the food industry following a deadly 2008 milk scandal.
HONG KONG
Radioactive fish found
A small amount of radioactive iodine-131 has been found in a sample of fish taken from a wholesale market, the government said on Friday. The territory has been monitoring radiation levels in the city’s food and water supply and atmosphere in the wake of the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station. The level of radiation found in the sample of grey mullet by the territory’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department — 7.7 becquerels per kilogram — was well below the government guideline of 100 becquerels per kilogram.
GHANA
Police rescue child slaves
Police say they have rescued 116 children who were forced into child labor in the country’s Volta Lake area. Human Trafficking Unit leader Superintendent Patience Quaye said on Friday that police found parents in fishing communities who had sold children as young as four years old for sums as low as 150 cedis — about US$100. Quaye says child labor is a widespread problem in the West African nation. She says police rescued 284 children in a similar operation last year. Interpol, which worked with police, said the operation earlier this month led to 28 arrests and convictions. Interpol also said they conducted a separate operation in the capital, Accra, that rescued 29 minors who had been trafficked into the sex industry.
DR CONGO
Hutu militia leader arrested
The suspected leader of an extremist Hutu militia was arrested after years on the run, an official said on Friday. Bernard Munyagishari was wanted on charges of genocide and other crimes. North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Munyagishari was arrested and taken to Kinshasa. The prosecutor of the Tanzania-based UN court for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide says he will be brought for trial. Munyagishari is alleged to have led the Interahamwe militia that committed mass rapes and killings of Tutsis in western Rwanda.
SINGAPORE
Free dolphins, group says
An animal welfare group on Friday launched a campaign to urge a casino and leisure complex to free 25 dolphins destined for a new marine park attraction. Resorts World Sentosa bought the mammals for an “interactive dolphin spa program” at its Marine Life Park attraction, where visitors can interact with the animals. “We hope that RWS will make a socially responsible decision and free the dolphins,” said Louis Ng, executive director of the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society.
UNITED STATES
Pentagon papers released
Forty years after they hit front pages, the Pentagon Papers will be released by the government next month. However, 11 words of the finally declassified history of the nation’s involvement in Vietnam will remain secret. The National Declassification Center will only say that the 11 words are all on one of the work’s 7,000 pages. Set for the week of June 13, the hard copy and online release comes 40 years after excerpts from the study first appeared in the New York Times. The resulting public uproar led to a major legal victory for press freedom when the Supreme Court upheld the right of newspapers to publish the papers.
ARGENTINA
Remains confiscated
An ancient mummy and three skulls from a pre-Incan Peruvian culture that were being smuggled as ceramics to be sold on Europe’s black market were confiscated by tax agency officials on Friday, officials said. The skulls, which still have hair and some teeth, and the mummy were sent from La Paz, Bolivia — stuffed in ceramics or wrapped in valuable cloth — to a local resident in the affluent Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta, the officials said.
UNITED STATES
Gil Scott-Heron dies
Musician Gil Scott-Heron, author of the song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised — which helped pioneer sounds that would fuse to become rap — has died at the age of 62 in New York City. A friend who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company confirmed Scott-Heron died on Friday afternoon in hospital. Doris Nolan said he died after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip. Scott-Heron recorded The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in the 1970s in Harlem. He mixed minimalistic percussion and spoken-word performances tinged with politics in a style he sometimes referred to as “bluesology.”
UNITED STATES
Porn condom rule mulled
California workplace safety officials have drafted rules to require porn performers to use condoms and other barriers in sex scenes to prevent being infected with sexually transmitted diseases. The 17-page draft proposal is to be discussed at a public meeting in Los Angeles on June 7. The draft would then go to the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board for a ruling on whether it becomes part of state code. Some major porn producers have opposed the use of condoms in porn in the past, arguing that such a rule would drive the industry out of California and that audiences don’t want to watch protected sex.
UNITED STATES
Strauss-Kahn declines shark
Dominique Strauss-Kahn got an unusual visitor at his place of luxury house arrest in New York on Friday: an inflatable shark. The toothy blue fish came with a string of helium balloons brought by an unidentified man, who tried to give them to a security official at the door of Strauss-Kahn’s residence, but was turned away. The man with the shark was not the only member of the public curious to get a closer look at the former head of the IMF. A group of Orthodox Jews dressed in black peered in at the door. Strauss-Kahn is accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid on May 14. He is living under house arrest in a US$14 million house in Manhattan’s trendy Tribeca neighborhood and is awaiting a court appearance on June 6.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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