SINGAPORE
Sex change prevents caning
A man who underwent sex-change surgery before being convicted on drugs charges escaped caning after a court recognized the change in gender, local media reported yesterday. Preeta Nivashani Rechnam, 40, was jailed on Monday for seven years and three months for a second drugs offence. The Straits Times newspaper said Rechnam was first sentenced in 1998 to three strokes of the cane in addition to a jail sentence of five years after being caught using morphine. Following his release, Rechnam went to Thailand in 2006 for sex-change surgery. Without the surgery, Rechnam could have been sentenced to between six and 12 strokes of the cane in addition to the jail term for being a repeat offender.
CHINA
Beijing defends Tehran
Minister of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) yesterday repeated a warning that Beijing is opposed to Iran possessing nuclear weapons, but defended Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear power. Yang’s comments came a day after the UN nuclear watchdog’s chief said he had “serious concerns” about possible military dimensions to Tehran’s atomic activities, and after US President Barack Obama left open the possibility of military action if Iran builds a nuclear weapon. Yang’s comments laid bare the tricky path Beijing is trying to steer between pressure from Washington and its allies and rival expectations from Iran, which looks to China as a sympathetic power and a big oil customer.
LAOS
Monkeys sold for research
Thousands of monkeys are being held in overcrowded and barren farms across the nation and sold for international laboratory research, according to a report from a British animal protection group. Vientiane has exported about 35,000 long-tailed macaques since 2004 as part of a fast--growing trade in the species for research, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection said in a statement released on Monday. The “appalling conditions and treatment of monkeys inside the breeding farms ... breach internationally recognized animal welfare guidelines,” the group said, following a field investigation and talks with primate company owners. “Some monkeys were found dead in their pens, while others were severely emaciated and suffering from severe hair loss and injuries,” the group said. The monkeys in the Laos farms are being sold to companies in China and Vietnam, which supply primates to laboratories in the US and Europe, the report alleges.
CHINA
Teenager self-immolates
A teenager has become the third Tibetan to self--immolate in as many days, exile groups said, as Beijing tightens security ahead of the anniversary of deadly 2008 riots. The 18-year-old man shouted anti--government slogans as he set himself alight near a government office in Aba Prefecture, Sichuan Province, Free Tibet and International Campaign for Tibet said in separate statements on Monday. The man, whose name was given as Dorjee, died at the scene and his body was removed by security personnel, London-based Free Tibet said. The protest came one day after a mother of four died after setting herself on fire on Sunday in Aba, according to reports by the same groups. Overseas rights groups say the escalation in self-immolations — a relatively new phenomenon — illustrates the growing desperation of ethnic Tibetans, who have long bristled at Beijing’s rule over the vast Himalayan region.
SOMALIA
Airline flies to Mogadishu
The first long-distance international commercial airliner in two decades to fly to war-torn Mogadishu landed on its maiden flight yesterday. The Turkish Airlines flight, with a high-level delegation from Ankara led by Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bosdag, was welcomed on landing in the anarchic seaside capital by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Several local airlines, including Kenya-based African Express, fly into Mogadishu from neighboring nations, but Turkish Airlines’ proposed twice-weekly flights are the first commercial flights from outside the region in 20 years. Mogadishu has had no effective government since 1991 and in recent years, al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabaab insurgents and other groups have taken an increasing hold on large parts of the country.
GERMANY
Brothers tried for militancy
Two brothers went on trial in Dusseldorf on Monday accused of being part of, or supporting, the militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a court spokesman said. Prosecutors at the court in the western city said 29-year-old Turgay C was part of a network since 2008 that financially supported the IMU. His 25-year-old brother, Omer C, trained at an IMU camp in the Afghan-Pakistani border area in 2009 and took part in combat missions, the prosecution said. He then returned to Europe a year later and raised funds, it said. The two, who are German nationals, were arrested about a year ago.
SWITZERLAND
Tamils protest at UN
Thousands of Tamils from across Europe protested in front of UN headquarters in Geneva on Monday, demanding the creation of an international tribunal to try “war crimes” committed in Sri Lanka. About 2,000 protesters, according to the SDA-ATS Swiss news agency, waved banners and placards in favor of self-determination for the Tamil minority and denounced “genocidal acts.” The protesters also denounced the use of Tamil children as “sex slaves” and the imposition of the Sinhala language and Buddist religion on Tamils. The protesters paid tribute to victims of the civil war, which claimed tens of thousands of lives and ended in 2009 when guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were forced from the north and east by the army.
MADAGASCAR
Storm kills dozens
Tropical Storm Irina has killed at least 65 people, most of them residents of the Ifanadiana district in the southeast of the island nation, weather authorities said on Monday. Three people were also reported missing, according to the national bureau of natural catastrophes, which did not provide any other details. Earlier it was reported that only one person had been killed in the storm that passed over the nation last week, before lashing the coasts of South Africa and Mozambique. “A tree fell on a house and the roof collapsed,” killing an elderly man in Mozambique’s southern Gaza Province, spokeswoman for the national disaster agency Rita Almeida said. In Durban, South Africa, beaches were closed as waves reached a height of 3m, municipal spokesman Thabo Mofokeng said. Ships were ordered to remain in port. Irina was the second killer storm of the season. Last month, Tropical Cyclone Giovanna left 35 people dead and many more injured. The cyclone season normally runs from November through last month and costs dozens of lives every year.
UNITED STATES
Symantec is ‘wrong’
Anonymous on Monday gave mixed reactions to a US computer security firm’s report that backers of the notorious hacker group were suckered into downloading software that steals online banking information. A message at a Twitter account for YourAnonNews blasted Symantec’s findings as “wrong and libelous,” while “tweets” from other accounts claiming to be voices from the loosely knit group alerted people to the danger. Symantec, which is among the long list of victims of Anonymous attacks, reported that someone replaced a software tool available for download by Anonymous allies with code that also steals bank account data. “Not only will supporters be breaking the law by participating in [denial-of-service] attacks on Anonymous hacktivism targets, but may also be at risk of having their online banking and e-mail credentials stolen,” Symantec said.
PERU
Police Web site blocked
The vigilante Internet hackers group Anonymous blocked the Web site of police who fight against computer crime, officials said on Monday. The attack on Sunday against the Division of Investigations of High-Tech Crimes “restricted access to the Web site from the outside,” a police source said on condition of anonymity. “If the police like to infiltrate us, maybe we can do the same,” a message on the Anonymous Peru Facebook account said after the attack. “PNP [National Police of Peru] I’m watching you,” the message said. Anonymous also published about 200 e-mail complaints of electronic fraud received daily by police.
CANADA
Jewish writer seeks asylum
Octogenarian Jewish writer Akos Kertesz of Hungary is seeking asylum in Canada because of a “political campaign” against him, sources close to him confirmed on Monday. Kertesz, 80, winner of the Hungary’s most prestigious literary prize, the Kossuth, arrived with his wife in Montreal last Wednesday. After Kertesz slammed wartime Hungary’s role in the Holocaust in an article published last August, “a political campaign was mounted against him, not only by the Budapest city hall, but also from within the government and parliament,” a statement said on Sunday. “Following the political campaign by the pro-government press, Mr Kertesz suffered threats and harassment, he felt his life was in danger,” it added. It quoted Kertesz as saying: “I did not make my decision against Hungary or the Hungarian people, but against the current government. I hope to be able to return again to a human and democratic Hungary.”
COLOMBIA
Garcia Marquez goes digital
Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez celebrated his 85th birthday yesterday with a special gift: the start of sales of an electronic version of his masterpiece novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I do not know if it will be as successful as hoped, but it is the goal,” Carmen Balcells, Garcia Marquez’s literary agent, said in an interview on Monday with Colombian radio Caracol. This year also marks the 30th anniversary since Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude has already sold 30 million copies worldwide. It tells the saga of a troubled family of Macondo, an imaginary village, in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has been translated into 35 languages, but only now is it appearing in a digital edition.
‘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