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.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of