CHINA
Putin to receive peace prize
The sponsors of a peace prize still plan to hold a ceremony awarding this year’s honor to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin despite orders not to. China International Peace Research Centre head Qiao Damo (譙達摩) said yesterday that the Dec. 9 ceremony to award the Confucius Prize will go ahead. That i0s despite what Qiao says are orders from the Chinese Ministry of Culture to cancel the ceremony because permission was not given to publicize the award and the group illicitly changed its name. The first Confucius prize was awarded last year to former Taiwanese vice president Lien Chan (連戰).
AUSTRALIA
Obama to get croc coverage
US President Barack Obama is expected to receive a warm welcome when he arrives tomorrow, but just in case the reception is wilder than expected a firm has offered him insurance against crocodiles. Obama’s two-day visit will take in Canberra as well as Darwin, in the heart of Crocodile Dundee country. Local firm TIO has snapped up the opportunity to insure the high-profile visitor, issuing him with a Crocodile Attack Insurance policy which will pay out A$50,000 (US$50,870) if the president is fatally attacked by a reptile. The company, which has been providing crocodile cover for more than 20 years, hopes to present a framed copy of the policy — which features a menacing photo of the deadly predator — to Obama in Darwin tomorrow.
CHINA
Ten die in building collapse
Ten people died and 12 were injured when a house collapsed during a funeral gathering in Hunan Province, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Eight people were killed immediately in the accident, which happened late on Monday, and two died of their injuries in hospital, local officials told Xinhua. The 12 injured are in a stable condition after the accident, which happened as villagers were making arrangements for the funeral of the home owner’s uncle, Xinhua said. It was not immediately clear what caused the accident.
AUSTRALIA
Gay marriage vote likely
Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday called for a free vote on gay marriage in parliament, but said she did not support changing the law to make same-sex marriage legal. Gay marriage is banned and opposed by both major political parties despite polls showing widespread public support for a change to allow gay couples the right to wed. Gillard said the issue provoked lively debate and she wanted her Labor Party colleagues to have the opportunity to express their views on it. The latest Nielsen poll on the subject published in the Herald Tuesday found that 62 percent of voters supported legalizing same-sex marriage — an increase of 5 percent compared with a year ago.
MALAYSIA
Bush, Blair trial planned
Activists will hold a symbolic trial this month for former US president George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair on charges of committing crimes against peace by invading Iraq, the event’s organizers said yesterday. The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is an initiative of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who staunchly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The tribunal will convene a four-day public hearing starting on Saturday to determine whether Bush and Blair committed crimes against peace and violated international law with their invasion of Iraq, Malaysian lawyer Yaacob Hussain Marican said.
UNITED STATES
Rushdie fights Facebook
British author Salman Rushdie has won a tussle with Facebook over his profile page that stemmed from his insistence he be allowed to use his middle name — Salman — instead of his first name — Ahmed — on Facebook. Rushdie recounted the saga in a series of tweets on Monday to the more than 113,000 followers of his Twitter account @salmanrushdie. Facebook requires its more than 800 million members to use their real names and also bars pseudonyms. Rushdie said Facebook deactivated his page over the weekend, “saying they didn’t believe I was me.” Rushdie said he sent a photograph of his passport to Facebook. “They said yes: ‘I was me,’ but insisted I use the name Ahmed, which appears before Salman on my passport and which I have never used,” he said. “They have reactivated my FB page as ‘Ahmed Rushdie,’ in spite of the world knowing me as Salman. Morons,” he said. Rushdie even tried reaching out directly to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Twitter. “Where are you hiding, Mark? Come out here and give me back my name!” he said. Failing to get a response from Facebook, Rushdie turned to what he called “ridicule by the Twitterverse.” “Dear #Facebook, forcing me to change my FB name from Salman to Ahmed Rushdie is like forcing J. Edgar to become John Hoover,” he said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Activists pan snooping taxis
Civil liberties campaigners on Monday expressed outrage at Oxford’s plan to install audio recorders in licensed taxi cabs as a security measure. City officials say that starting next year its 600-plus cabs will carry audio-equipped cameras that run whenever the vehicle is in use, “leading the way” in ensuring the safety of passengers and drivers. “This is a staggering invasion of privacy, being done with ... a total disregard for civil liberties,” Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch said. He said his group would complain to an independent regulator. Under the proposed plan, conversations in taxis will be recorded from the time an engine is running until 30 minutes after the car’s ignition is turned off.
ARGENTINA
‘SoyBook’ woos farmers
Instead of uploading pictures of friends and family, members of a new social network share photos of soybean fields and press the “like button” on the latest tractor models. Building on the success of well-known social networks, SojaBook (www.sojabook.com) — which means “SoyBook” in English — has found fertile ground in the country. As well as being one of the world’s biggest suppliers of soybeans and other farm goods, Argentines are also among the world’s biggest social network users.
SOUTH AFRICA
Farmer killed by pet hippo
A farmer has been killed by his pet hippopotamus — despite repeated warnings that it was a wild animal that could never be tamed. Marius Els, 40, an army major, was bitten to death by the 1.2 tonne hippo he christened Humphrey and tried to domesticate on a farm in the Free State province. Els’ savaged body was found submerged in the river where, years earlier, the hippo had been rescued from a flood. It grew too big for the people who adopted it and was bought by Els at the age of five months, becoming a pet on his 160-hectare farm and learning to swim with humans. Earlier this year, Els was photographed riding on the five-year-old hippo’s back. “Humphrey’s like a son to me, he’s just like a human,” he said. “There’s a relationship between me and Humphrey and that’s what some people don’t understand.”
UNITED STATES
Health bill goes to top court
The Supreme Court is ready to consider next year the legality of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation, an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system. The law, passed by Congress last year on a largely party-line vote, was the most far-reaching domestic legislation in a generation, but has proved a political lightning rod. The court’s schedule set aside more than five hours of argument for the law, unprecedented in modern times. The justices left themselves an opening to defer the outcome if they should choose, by requesting arguments on one lower court’s ruling that a decision must wait until 2015, when one of the law’s many provisions takes effect.
UNITED STATES
Girl trapped in wrecked car
North Carolina authorities said a nine-year-old girl pinned in a wrecked car for almost two days ate Pop-Tarts and drank energy drinks to survive the single-car crash that killed her father. The North Carolina Highway Patrol said Jordan Landon was airlifted to a hospital on Sunday night after rescue teams cut her out of the car that had been upside down in a culvert since Friday night. Sergeant David Clifton calls the girl “heroic” and that she was able to stay calm despite the dark and cold. He said the girl was talkative and is expected to recover fully. Clifton said a person walking by saw the car and called 911 late on Sunday afternoon.
CANADA
Separatist starts new party
A former Quebec separatist minister on Monday galvanized public support around a new party by vowing to end 40 years of thorny debate on whether the French-speaking province should split from Canada. “We want change,” Francois Legault, the co-founder of Air Transat and once a minister in the independence-minded Parti Quebecois, said as he unveiled his new Coalition for the Future of Quebec (Coalition Avenir Quebec) party. “I’m not coming back [to politics] to sign the Constitution,” Legault told a press conference. “I’m not coming back to promote the sovereignty of Quebec.” The emergence of Legault’s new party comes at a time when support for Quebec independence is at its lowest.
CANADA
Child porn king sentenced
A 52-year-old man was sentenced on Monday to five years in prison for amassing the largest collection of child pornography ever seized in the nation. Douglas Hugh Stewart, 52, pleaded guilty to possessing, accessing and distributing child pornography after police discovered almost 6 million nude and pornographic images and videos of girls as young as two on his computer. The customer service manager, who lived alone in his father’s basement, was sentenced to four-and-a-half to five years for each charge, but will serve them concurrently.
PERU
Thieves escape lynching
Three alleged thieves narrowly escaped being lynched by an angry mob on Monday, but could not avoid the humiliation of being forced to walk stark naked down the cold pre-dawn streets of an Andean city. Footage that aired on America Television showed police rescuing the nude men from angry taxi drivers bent on stringing them up and setting them on fire in the central city of Huancayo. The taxi drivers caught the men as they were holding up a colleague at dawn, police said. The cabbies beat the suspects, tore off their clothes, tied their hands and forced them to walk down the street nude.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At 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
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