CHINA
Pork scandal culprits get jail
China’s state news agency says more than 100 people including 77 government employees have been sentenced in a scandal involving pork tainted with a banned chemical. At least one person was given the death penalty. Several farms in Henan Province were found to be using the fat-burning drug clenbuterol — a banned chemical that makes pork leaner but can harm humans. Xinhua news agency says the main culprit, Liu Xiang (劉襄), was convicted of harming public safety and sentenced to death, with the execution delayed for two years. Such sentences often are later commuted to life imprisonment. Clenbuterol can cause nausea, dizziness and heart palpitations.
SOUTH KOREA
Pastor jailed for adultery
A Christian pastor was jailed for 18 months for having a decade-long affair with a woman whose wedding he had officiated at, a court said yesterday. Adultery in South Korea is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison, but most offenders usually receive only suspended jail terms. The 51-year-old pastor, whose name has been withheld for privacy, had a secret affair with the woman, 41, for more than 10 years after conducting her marriage ceremony. She and her husband were both followers of his church. The woman was also given a year-long jail sentence. “The pastor, who officiated at the couple’s wedding, should have prayed for their happy marriage life,” the court in Cheongju said in a statement.
AUSTRALIA
Nursing home fire toll rises
An 87-year-old man has become the 10th fatality from a fire at a Sydney nursing home over which a former nurse is facing murder charges, police said yesterday. The man died in hospital late on Friday, a week after a blaze tore through the Quakers Hill Nursing Home, leaving dozens of elderly and infirm residents injured. “Three elderly residents died in the blaze,” police said in a statement. “A total of seven others have now died in various Sydney hospitals while undergoing treatment for severe injuries.” A 35-year-old man who worked as a nurse at the home has been charged with eight counts of murder.
SOUTH KOREA
Sex harassment victim paid
A South Korean woman who suffered repeated sexual harassment at work will be awarded compensation, the state workers’ welfare agency said yesterday in a landmark ruling which acknowledged that her suffering amounted to a work-related injury. The judgement marked the first time that suffering caused by sexual harassment has been classed as a workplace injury and many other victims are now likely to file similar appeals with the agency, the Yonhap news service reported.
AUSTRALIA
Flooding traps hundreds
Flooding in the east has left hundreds of people trapped in their rural homes and prompted rescues of at least 10 people from their vehicles. Heavy rain has inundated several townships in northern New South Wales state, trapping motorists in their cars yesterday and leaving rural properties swamped. According to the State Emergency Service, at least 400 people on properties southwest of Coffs Harbour and another 50 near Moree township have been cut off by the floodwaters. Severe weather warnings remain in place for the state’s northern parts, with more flooding predicted on several local rivers.
UNITED STATES
Strauss-Kahn plot suggested
Former IMF managing--director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer on Friday suggested that a political plot could have been behind the sex assault charges that brought down his client. Washington attorney William Taylor referred to an upcoming investigative article in the New York Review of Books as evidence that Straus-Kahn might have been derailed just as he was preparing to run against French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The article, scheduled to be published yesterday, questions whether a missing BlackBerry phone had been hacked by Strauss-Kahn’s political rivals. It quotes unnamed sources close to Strauss-Kahn saying that he had been warned in a text message the day of his arrest that an e-mail he had sent to his wife from the BlackBerry had been read at the offices of Sarkozy’s UMP party in Paris.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mosley sues Google
Google Inc, the world’s biggest Internet search engine provider, has been sued in a Hamburg court by former Formula One president Max Mosley over search results referring to a “Nazi-themed” sex party. Mosley yesterday told a UK inquiry investigating the phone-hacking scandal at News Corp that he filed suits against Google in Germany and France over the search results. Mosley won a £60,000 (US$92,900) breach-of-privacy award in a UK court from Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World in 2008 for publishing the story on a Nazi-themed “orgy,” along with a video, without contacting him. A judge ruled there was no Nazi theme and the story was not in the public interest.
UNITED STATES
Reagan, Bush not liable
One of the prosecutors who investigated the Iran--Contra affair concluded two decades ago that former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were not criminally liable in the scandal, according to reports made public on Friday. Associate independent counsel Christian Mixter reached that conclusion in 1991 even though he found that Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment sold to Iran in the arms-for-hostages deals from 1985 to 1986. In a separate report on Bush, Mixter wrote that the then-vice president chaired a committee that recommended mining the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983.
PERU
Van der Sloot trial gets date
The trial of Dutchman Joran Van der Sloot on charges of killing Stephany Flores Ramirez, 21, will begin on Jan. 6, sources said on Friday. He is also the lead suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a US tourist who was 18 when she went missing in Aruba in 2005. In the Peru case, Van der Sloot initially pleaded guilty, but then claimed his confession was extorted. He then said he killed Flores under extreme emotional anger after she accessed files about Holloway on his computer.
UNITED STATES
Killing shakes small town
Ashland is a liberal outpost in conservative rural Oregon. The town of 20,000, just a few miles north of the California border, is known for good schools, good restaurants, high housing prices and deer that walk freely through town. The real-life slaying of 23-year-old David Grubbs last weekend while walking home from work has shocked the locals. “This community has very little crime of any type, especially violent crime,” Police Chief Terry Holderness said. “We are contacting most major police departments up and down the West Coast looking for similar situations and haven’t found any yet.”
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
‘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
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