CHINA
Prisoners buy pets, booze
Guards at a jail in Hebei Province sold luxuries including pure-breed dogs, liquor and cellphones to inmates, Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post reported yesterday. An investigation into the jail found guards were supplementing their income by selling pets and bottles of baijiu, the paper said. Access to prison keys was poorly supervised and some inmates even had copies, the Shanghai Daily said. The lax security and perks enjoyed by the inmates only emerged after an inmate who was serving 10 years for robbery escaped last month, it said. The jailbreak sparked a massive manhunt involving hundreds of police before he was captured two weeks later, and prompted the government to investigate the jail, which has more than 3,000 inmates. The warden and two guards arrested.
SINGAPORE
Molester postman jailed
A postman who sexually abused 52 young girls over a 20-year period has been jailed in the city-state’s worst recorded case of serial molesting, police and press reports said yesterday. Abdul Razak Hamid, a 53-year-old father of three, was sentenced on Tuesday to 16 years in jail after being charged with 75 instances of restraining and molesting girls aged five to 11 years since 1991, a police spokesman said. The Straits Times said Razak lured some of his victims during his rounds by asking them to help retrieve items from letter boxes in exchange for treats like coins and ice cream, and then took them to secluded spots to molest them. Razak surrendered to police in April after seeing footage of himself on TV. He pleaded guilty to 12 counts of wrongful restraint and 63 other charges involving molesting young girls were taken into consideration when he was sentenced.
HONG KONG
University president quits
Hong Kong University president Tsui Lap-chee (徐立之) has said he will quit next year, a move critics say is due to the controversial manhandling of student protestors during Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang’s (李克強) three-day visit to the territory in August. A group of student protesters were forcibly carried away by police in the campus as Li was attending an event. The protesters, some clad in “Vindicate June 4” t-shirts referring to Tiananmen Square, had attempted to approach the venue of the event Li was attending, but were shoved and one was pushed to the ground by the police. However, no reasons were given for Tsui’s decision. Tsui, a Canadian citizen who grew up in the territory, was appointed as school’s 14th vice chancellor in September 2002.
UNITED STATES
Aung San Suu Kyi honored
Myanmar pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was honored by the University of Michigan on Tuesday night, says freedom from fear is the “master key” that clears the way to other freedoms. The Nobel peace prize laureate received the Wallenberg Medal, named for the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during World War II. She did not attend the ceremony, but gave a videotaped speech.
AFGHANISTAN
Tanker blaze kills dozens
At least 10 civilians were killed and 35 wounded on a road near a major US base after a small bomb punctured a hole in the side of a fuel tanker that was later engulfed by a large blaze, eyewitnesses and officials said yesterday. The tanker started leaking after the initial small blast on Tuesday night and people from a nearby village, including children, rushed to collect some of the oil.
BRAZIL
Thousands forced to work
Thousands of people still toil in forced labor nationwide, despite government attempts to curtail the practice, the International Labour Organization said on Tuesday in a new report. Since 1995, more than 40,000 people have been rescued from forced labor, citing field reports from the poor, rural areas in the country’s northeast and interviews with 121 people who were released between 2006 to 2007. The workers were found to be mostly black males who grew up in poverty, began working as children and had little formal education, the organization’s report said. Many of them were working in near slave-like conditions without contracts and did not receive any salary, doing long hours of manual labor without the possibility of leaving their remote work sites, the report said.
URUGUAY
Senate revokes amnesty
The senate in Montevideo has voted to revoke an amnesty law protecting scores of officials in the country’s 1973 to 1985 dictatorship from human rights prosecutions. Backed by the governing Broad Front coalition, the vote has squeaked through by a 16-15 margin and was to be voted on by the Uruguay’s Chamber of Deputies yesterday.
UNITED STATES
Court denies salvage claim
A federal court in Washington has dismissed a private salvage company’s claim to half of a treasure potentially worth billions of US dollars and believed to lie in the wreck of a Spanish galleon that sank 300 years ago off Colombia’s coast. The court ruling notes that the statute of limitations has expired on a breach-of-contract claim by the American company Sea Search Armada and noted that “no specific money judgment exists to be enforced.” Sea Search Armada has been embroiled in a two-decade-long dispute with the Colombian government over who has rights to the estimated US$4 billion to US$17 billion in gold, silver and emeralds in the wreck.
UNITED STATES
Biggest nuke dismantled
The last of the nation’s most powerful nuclear bombs has been taken apart in Texas. Technicians at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo removed the uranium on Tuesday from the last of the nation’s largest nuclear bombs, a Cold War relic known as the B53. The bomb, put into service in 1962, was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, that killed as many as 140,000 people at the end of World War II. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman watched workers take the bomb apart. He says it’s “a milestone accomplishment” and a step toward US President Barack Obama’s mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The nation’s largest nuclear bomb now is the 1.2 megaton B83. The B53 was 9 megatons.
UNITED STATES
Puppy rescued from train
A black Labrador puppy that was rescued from the top of a freight train now has a new home in Liberty South Carolina. Tina Parker says she and her family were at a train crossing on Sunday night when they saw the dog moving around on a boxcar. She called emergency services and followed the train for about 9.6km. A Norfolk Southern spokeswoman says they stopped the train. The Parker family helped firefighters find the car, and they used a ladder to reach the pup. No one knows how the dog ended up there. The dog appears healthy and happy. Her new name is Boxcar Hunter, or Boxy for short.
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
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number