CHINA
New police chief named
A city in the southwest at the center of a brewing political scandal has appointed a new police chief and renewed a controversial campaign against organized crime. Newspapers yesterday said Guan Haixiang (關海祥) had been appointed to replace former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun (王立軍). Wang is believed to be in custody amid an investigation over alleged past malfeasance and following his apparent attempt to gain political asylum at a US consulate. The scandal surrounding Wang has raised questions about the political future of Chongqing Communist Party boss Bo Xilai (薄熙來), one of the country’s most powerful and ambitious politicians.
CHINA
Tibetan monk self-immolates
Overseas groups say another Tibetan Buddhist monk has set himself on fire in the west amid a wave of such protests against China’s handling of its vast Tibetan areas. The advocacy group Free Tibet said Tamchoe Sangpo set himself alight on Friday during a prayer ceremony at a monastery in a remote region of Qinghai Province. It gave no details about his current condition, although US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia said he had died. A police officer in the county of Tianjun, where the monastery is located, and an official at the surrounding Haixi Prefectural Government said yesterday that they had no information about the case.
CHINA
Pop fans injured in collapse
A seating section has collapsed at a concert by Hong Kong pop star Wang Fei (王菲) in the southwest, injuring 64 people. The state-run Beijing News said concertgoers suffered cuts, broken bones and head injuries after scaffolding behind the stage broke apart on Friday night. Those seated in the area fell about 1.5m to the concrete floor of the city of Chongqing’s Olympic stadium. The paper said none of the injuries was life-threatening. The concert has been rescheduled for tomorrow.
CHINA
Fire kills 150 cats
About 150 stray cats cared for by an elderly woman died in a blaze at her home in Beijing, a report said yesterday. “Granny Ding” had taken in stray cats and dogs for the past 30 years and looked after them at her traditional courtyard-style house in central Beijing, the Beijing Morning Post reported. The fire broke out early on Friday and destroyed three rooms where about 150 cats were staying and unable to escape. A further 30 cats and 50 dogs who shared the 84-year-old’s bedroom survived. Ding told the newspaper that she lived alone and sought the company of animals because she had missed out on marriage after having contracted tuberculosis when she was young.
SOUTH KOREA
Repatriation protested
Protesters rallied yesterday outside the Chinese embassy in Seoul, demanding that Beijing scrap plans to repatriate newly-arrested refugees from North Korea. The demonstrators, estimated by police at about 100, said the 33 refugees face severe punishment or even death if forced back to their homeland. About 70 percent of the fugitives have families in South Korea, they said in a statement, including a 19-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. In their statement, the demonstrators claimed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had given orders to execute all those caught trying to flee his country.
DENMARK
Drunk captain zigzags
The navy rushed a helicopter to intercept an 82m cargo ship after it was spotted zigzagging strangely in the Baltic Sea, maritime authorities said on Friday. The Danica Hav was heading to Luebeck, Germany, from Sweden overnight on Thursday to Friday when it was spotted adrift in the Great Belt strait that separates the country’s two main islands, navy spokesman Kenneth Nielsen said. “We couldn’t get contact with the ship,” he said. A helicopter was flown to the vessel and navymen found the Russian captain sleeping deeply at the helm of the ship with a strong smell of alcohol wafting around him, the spokesman said. The captain was flown to the Roskilde police station where a blood test, taken eight hours after the arrest, showed 2.18g of alcohol per liter.
MALAWI
Critic moved to hospital
The lawyer for an outspoken opponent of the president says his client has been moved from jail to a hospital in Blantyre, where he is being treated under police guard for a heart ailment. Ralph Kasambara’s lawyer Wapona Kita said he went with him to a hospital early yesterday. Kita quoted doctors as saying Kasambara “has developed a serious cardiac condition.” Kasambara was arrested on Monday, accused of kidnapping and torturing three men he told reporters had confessed they had been sent by the government to firebomb his office. The government denies Kasambara’s accusations. Kasambara denies the charges against him.
PAKISTAN
Bomb toll rises to 32
A local official says the death toll from a suicide attack in the majority-Shiite town of Parachinar close to the Afghan border has reached 32. Wajid Ali, who is an administrator in the town said yesterday that nine people had died in hospitals since the Friday blast, which was initially reported to have killed 23. Another 67 were injured when a motorcyclist detonated his explosives in Parachinar’s market. Ali said security forces later shot and killed four people who took to the streets to protest.
LATVIA
Poll to decide on Russian
Voting stations have opened in a historic referendum on whether to make Russian the nation’s second national language. The Baltic country’s minority Russians, who make up approximately one-third of the 2.1 million population, believe that according official status to the Russian language would reverse what they claim has been 20 years of discrimination. For ethnic Latvians, yesterday’s referendum is a brazen attempt to encroach on the nation’s independence, which was restored two decades ago after it split from the Soviet Union. The vote is expected to fail, but widen the rift in society.
NIGERIA
Scores die in bus crash
Authorities say 32 people have been killed in a head-on crash between two buses. Zakariyya Mamman of the Federal Road Safety Commission said the crash happened on Thursday in the northern state of Bauchi. Mamman said the buses collided when trying to speed through a work zone on a highway. Mamman said the buses caught fire after the crash. Car crashes are common on the country’s poorly maintained roads. Drivers often travel at high speed and overtake slower vehicles, leading to head-on collisions and high death rates. Even main cities are linked by pitted, two-lane roads crammed with passenger buses, trucks laden with goods and rickety private vehicles.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the