CHINA
Vatican-backed priest held
Police detained a Vatican-backed Catholic priest and blocked his ordination as a bishop, a parishioner said yesterday, in a move likely to raise tensions with the Holy See. The detention of Joseph Sun Jigen (孫繼根) came as the state-run Catholic Church reportedly ordained another bishop without the consent of the Vatican. “Joseph Sun Jigeng was taken away by police on June 26 and he has not been released,” a member of the Handan Catholic Church in Hebei Province said by phone. “On June 29, we had planned to have the ordination ceremony, but the police have blocked the road and no ceremony can be held,” said the church member, who refused to be named. On Wednesday, Paul Lei Shiyin (雷世銀) was ordained without Vatican approval as the bishop of Leshan in a ceremony held in Sichuan Province, the Vatican-linked AsiaNews Web site reported.
JAPAN
Earthquake shakes Nagano
A magnitude 5.4 earthquake shook central Japan yesterday, seismologists said, injuring several people and causing cracks in a 16th-century samurai castle listed as a national treasure. The quake hit at 8:16am with the shallow focus located in Nagano Prefecture, about 180km northwest of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It was followed by smaller aftershocks. The tremor damaged Matsumoto Castle in Nagano, causing cracks in the inner walls of a tower built in the late 16th century, according to a municipal official. Public broadcaster NHK said the morning tremor injured nine people, including a woman who fell off her bed.
SOUTH KOREA
Dance class peeper jailed
A 39-year-old was jailed for 10 months yesterday for secretly videotaping women who were taking part in a belly-dancing class. The man, identified only as Lim, videotaped the scantily dressed group on seven occasions in March from the rooftop of a nearby building in Yongin, 30km south of Seoul. “The accused, who was punished in the past for a similar offence, committed a crime again to satisfy his sexual desire,” the Suwon District Court said in a statement. “His behavior is tantamount to sexual violence.”
CHINA
Longest sea bridge opens
The world’s longest cross-sea bridge has opened, linking Qingdao to an offshore island, Huangdao. The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is 42km long. CCTV said the 35m wide bridge is the longest of its kind and cost more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion). CCTV said the bridge passed construction appraisals on Monday and the bridge and an undersea tunnel opened to traffic yesterday. It has taken four years to build the bridge, which is supported by more than 5,000 pillars. According to Guinness World Records, the previous record-holder for a bridge over water is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana.
PAKISTAN
Paramilitary troops charged
A court on Wednesday charged six members of a paramilitary force with murder for the killing of an unarmed man, a rare action against the country’s powerful security establishment. The incident, which took place last month in Karachi, was caught on videotape and broadcast on television, deepening anger against the security forces. The footage shows the soldiers from the Rangers force opening fire at close range at the man identified as Sarfaraz Shah in a public park in Karachi.
AUSTRIA
OSCE pushes treaty signing
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on Wednesday urged 10 member nations to sign up to a global anti-landmine treaty. The 10 countries are the US, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Finland, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland and Uzbekistan. The 46 other OSCE members are among 156 countries to have signed the 1997 Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention to date.
POLAND
Russia blamed for crash
A report by an opposition party says Russian aviation officials bear most responsibility for the crash in April last year of a government plane in which then-president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others were killed. The Law and Justice Party blamed the Russians for allowing the plane to land in almost no visibility and said the crew was provided with incorrect landing parameters. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the president who was killed in the crash, is the party head. The official Russian report said the blame rested solely with the pilot.
ITALY
Experts trash ‘evidence’
The appeal by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito against their conviction for the killing of the British student Meredith Kercher took a significant turn on Wednesday when independent, court-appointed experts dismissed as unreliable forensic evidence crucial to the prosecution’s case. Two Rome University professors said there was no certainty that traces of DNA found on a knife allegedly used in the murder belonged to Kercher. They added that a trace of Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra clip, the vital piece of evidence linking him to the murder scene, could have got there by contamination as the defense team claimed at the trial. The DNA traces on the knife appeared “unreliable in as much as [they were] not supported by scientifically validated analytic procedures,” the experts’ report said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Chip record smashed
Fish and chips-loving Britons celebrated their devotion to the national dish on Wednesday by cooking the world’s biggest-ever portion of chips. The Fish and Chip Shop at the Adventure Island fun park in Southend-on-Sea cooked up 448kg of chips, piled up inside a giant box. Five staff took four hours and 20 minutes to cut the potatoes, deep fry them and box them up, battering the Guinness World Record of 368.5kg set in 2004.
GERMANY
‘Schreibschrift’ criticized
It has long been a painful rite of passage for schoolchildren — learning “die Schreibschrift,” a fiddly form of joined-up handwriting all pupils are expected to have mastered by the time they leave elementary school. Now many teachers have had enough, insisting it is a waste of time to force children to learn a cursive script when they have already learned to print letters at kindergarten. The national elementary schoolteachers’ union has started a campaign to abolish compulsory teaching of Schreibschrift. “It’s completely unnecessary, a deadweight tradition,” said Ulrich Hecker, union’s deputy chairman.
UNITED KINGDOM
Finger pointed at fenugreek
Imported fenugreek seeds from Egypt may be the source of highly toxic E. coli outbreaks in Germany and France that have killed at least 48 people, initial investigations by experts from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Food Safety Authority show.
Agencies
UNITED STATES
Turtles hold up flights
Flights at John F. Kennedy International Airport were delayed briefly on Wednesday when about 150 diamondback terrapin turtles were spotted crossing a runway, authorities said. The reptiles were trying to get to the other side of the runway to lay eggs in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which borders the airport. Port Authority staff rushed out to the tarmac where, between takeoffs and landings, they scooped up the turtles and helped them on their way. Naturalists said the 75-hectare Jamaica Bay may be the diamondback’s most popular breeding ground in North America.
MEXICO
Arlene brings downpour
Central areas faced torrential rains as the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, Arlene, neared the coast early yesterday. Emergency services advised communities in the storm’s direct path to evacuate and state oil monopoly Pemex was on alert for possible impact to refineries and other facilities. Authorities said the storm was expected to be 700km wide and drench central areas by tomorrow, affecting areas as far away as the Pacific coast. Arlene, moving west, had maximum sustained winds of 95kph and was located 80km east of the fishing town of Tuxpan in Veracruz State yesterday, the US National Hurricane Center said.
UNITED STATES
Atheist billboard removed
A billboard supporting atheism has been taken down from property owned by an Ohio church after the pastor complained. The ad put up in Columbus by the Freedom From Religion Foundation featured the beaming face of a local nonbeliever and the man’s message: “I can be good without God.” The sign had upset Reverend Waymon Malone of Christ Cathedral Church. The church owns the land where the billboard went up. Malone was unavailable for comment, but his mother-in-law told the Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday that the pastor ordered that the ad be removed.
UNITED STATES
Moth removed from ear
Doctors used tweezers to remove a stubborn moth from a 12-year-old Colorado boy’s ear after trying in vain to kill it. Wade Scholte of Parker, southeast of Denver, says the moth crawled into his ear on Sunday night after he fell asleep. He awoke screaming and crying. After trying to remove the moth at home, the boy’s mother took him to the emergency room. The doctors numbed Wade’s ear and then tried drowning the moth to kill it. Finally they used tweezers and pulled it out alive. According to KUSA-TV, doctors put the moth in a cup to give the boy as a keepsake.
SPAIN
Alleged Peron tiara found
Spanish and Italian police have recovered stolen jewels worth 6 million euros (US$9 million), including a tiara that may have belonged to the late first lady of Argentina Eva Peron, the government said on Wednesday. The jewels, snatched in a complex sting involving counterfeit money, a fake Arab sheik and an accomplice hidden in a desk, were found in a safe in a luxury Milan hotel room in an operation carried out with Interpol, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement. Seven suspects in the December 2009 heist, believed to be part of a Serbian crime group, were arrested in March in Switzerland, France and Italy and then extradited to Madrid where they are awaiting trial, it said.
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