JAPAN
N Korean boat gets lost
A small boat believed to be from North Korea wandered into territorial waters, carrying three men and a dead body. The coast guard said yesterday that the three men aboard the boat were being fed and questioned. Other details were not immediately available. Media reports quoted the men as saying they had gotten lost while fishing and wanted to return to North Korea — meaning they were not defectors. The reports also said the body was that of a fourth passenger who died a few days ago while at sea.
JAPAN
Old reactors to close
Tokyo says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety following the nuclear crisis set off by last year’s tsunami. Concern about aging reactors has been growing because the three units at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant that went into meltdown following the tsunami in March last year were built starting in 1967. Among other reactors at least 40 years old are those at the Tsuruga and Mihama plants, construction of which started in 1970. Many more of the nation’s 54 reactors will reach the 40-year mark in coming years.
CHINA
Tibetans self-immolate
London-based Free Tibet says two people have set themselves on fire in Sichuan Province in the latest in a series of apparent self--immolations in protest at Beijing’s rule. The activist group said witnesses saw a man set himself on fire on Friday near a monastery in Aba Prefecture. It said security forces put out the flames and took the man away. His condition is unknown. Free Tibet says someone else died at about the same time in a self-immolation nearby. It gave no other details. The claims could not be confirmed. A woman at the prefecture government office yesterday said she knew nothing about the incidents.
BELGIUM
Stolen painting returned
A painting by surrealist master Rene Magritte, stolen at gunpoint two years ago, has been returned after the thieves apparently failed to find a buyer, the Magritte museum in Brussels said on Friday. The work, titled Olympia, was stolen in September 2009 by two armed gunmen from Magritte’s former home, which is open as a museum by appointment only. Said to be worth about 3 million euros (US$3.8 million) at the time, experts had said the highly recognizable work would be difficult to sell. More than two years later, a person contacted an expert working with the insurance company and offered to hand it back, museum curator Andre Garitte said. “They’d visibly understood they wouldn’t be able to sell it because it was too well-known. Luckily they didn’t destroy it.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Bletchley Park to be listed
The government has acted to protect a crumbling piece of wartime — and computing — history. The government said on Friday that it has given protected status to the derelict Block C at Bletchley Park, the site northwest of London where mathematicians and cryptographers toiled in secret to crack Nazi communications codes. Historians believe their work shortened the war by as much as two years. The steel-and-concrete Block C contained high-speed data processing machines that helped the British crack Germany’s Enigma encryption device. Heritage Minister John Penrose said on Friday that Block C “can be viewed as the birthplace of modern information technology.”
UNITED STATES
Paul disavows attack on rival
Republican White House hopeful Ron Paul on Friday repudiated an ad, made by a supporter, that attacks rival Jon Huntsman over his ties to China and suggests he was brainwashed by Beijing. “I haven’t looked at it, but I understand it’s an ugly ad and I’ve disavowed it,” Paul told reporters after a rally ahead of New Hampshire’s nominating primary on Tuesday, adding: “Obviously, it was way, way out of order.” The ad, posted on YouTube by “NHLiberty4Paul,” shows footage of Huntsman, who served as President Barack Obama’s first envoy to China, speaking Mandarin and holding his adoptive daughters. The ad features Gracie — whom the Huntsmans adopted after she was found abandoned at a Chinese vegetable market aged two months — and Asha, who was abandoned in a rural Indian village. Interspersed among the images are short text messages, including: “The Manchurian candidate: What’s he hiding?” “American values, Or Chinese?” “Weak on China? Wonder Why?” “American Values and Liberty: Vote Ron Paul,” the ad ends.
UNITED STATES
Diner bars politicians
With Republican presidential hopefuls blitzing New Hampshire ahead of its critical primary on Tuesday, one small eatery in coastal Portsmouth has had it with gladhanding campaigners disrupting diners. So the hand-drawn, red-white-and-blue sign on the door of the 28-seat Colby’s Breakfast and Lunch restaurant declares: “No Politicians No Exceptions.” The Portsmouth Herald newspaper reported on Thursday that Colby’s manager Jessica Labrie made and posted the sign on Tuesday after patrons complained about the steady stream of politicians stopping in to court voters. “They make a big deal when they come in here,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “You can watch all this stuff on the news, but when you’re here eating breakfast, you don’t want to hear it.” Texas Governor Rick Perry, Representative Michele Bachmann and former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer stopped by the restaurant over the past few months, it said.
MEXICO
Casino arson suspect caught
Authorities said on Friday they had captured an alleged Zetas drug gang member who is suspected of having masterminded an arson attack on a casino that killed 52 people in the northern city of Monterrey last year. Baltazar Saucedo Estrada, alias “Mataperros” or “Dog killer,” ordered the Aug. 25 attack on the Casino Royale, Nuevo Leon State prosecutor Adrian de la Garza said at a news conference. Saucedo Estrada was the third to be caught of five Zeta chiefs allegedly responsible for one of the deadliest attacks in more than five years of brutal drug violence in the country. Authorities had offered more than US$1 million for information leading to his capture. Saucedo Estrada said he received orders to burn the casino because the owner refused to pay protection money, according to Jorge Domene, Nuevo Leon security spokesman.
HAITI
Cholera has killed 7,000
Nearly 7,000 people have now died from cholera in the country in an epidemic that has become one of the worst of recent decades, a top health official said on Friday. Pan American Health Organization Deputy Director Jon Kim Andrus said that as of last month, on top of the deaths, the Haitian government had reported more than 520,000 cholera cases, with 200 new sufferers appearing each day. Andrus said it was “one of the largest cholera outbreaks in modern history to affect a single country.”
‘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