CHINA
Forbidden City thief jailed
A Chinese farmer has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for stealing works of art and jewels from the Forbidden City last year, his lawyer said yesterday, in a rare theft at the ancient imperial palace. Shi Baikui (石柏魁), 27, from Shandong Province, was arrested in May last year at an Internet cafe in Beijing more than 48 hours after committing the theft. According to Xinhua news agency, Shi broke into the heavily guarded former home of Chinese emperors in May last year, where he stole nine valuable items, including gold and jewels. Police managed to recover six of the stolen items, but three pieces worth an estimated 150,000 yuan remain missing, Xinhua said. News reports at the time said the stolen items — valued at up to 10 million yuan — dated from the early 20th century and included jewelry boxes and women’s make-up cases. Shi’s theft is the fifth on record at the Forbidden City.
NEPAL
Hydro project endangered
A Chinese company building a crucial hydroelectric power plant in power-starved Nepal has threatened to pull out, an official said yesterday. Energy Ministry spokesman Arjun Karki said China Three Gorges International Corp has sent a letter to the government expressing concern over a parliamentary committee order for the company to suspend work while it investigates possible irregularities in the granting of the firm’s license. The company said in the letter that it could pull out of the project. The parliamentary Natural Resources and Means Committee said it was probing the government’s decision to grant the project to the Chinese company without calling for international bidding.
AUSTRALIA
Concert played on bridge
A group of Sydney Symphony Orchestra musicians scaled the city’s Harbour Bridge for an exclusive concert yesterday to celebrate the sweeping structure’s 80th birthday. Known as the “Grand Old Dame” of Sydney, or more colloquially “The Coathanger,” the bridge was officially opened to traffic on March 19, 1932, joining the harbor’s northern and southern shores for the first time. It was an ambitious project that took eight years to complete, with construction of the 1,149m span claiming the lives of 16 men. To celebrate its 80th anniversary, 11 brass section musicians from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra — also turning 80 this year — climbed to the top of the bridge’s 134m high arch to perform for a select group of guests. “The musicians performed Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man plus the theme music from the movie Chariots of Fire” a spokeswoman said.
ISRAEL
Palestine not viable: report
A government report says the Palestinian Authority is not economically stable enough for statehood. The report is set to be presented this week to donors to the Palestinian Authority. They include the US, the EU, the World Bank and the IMF. The report says Palestinian “financial stability is now challenged.” It cited a shortfall of foreign aid and lack of development in the private sector. Last year, the IMF said Palestinian financial institutions were ready for statehood. Palestinian spokesman Ghassan Khatib rejected the Israeli report, citing statements by the IMF and others. “As Palestinians, we are ready for statehood,” he said. “Our institutions are ready.” Donors have given billions of dollars to the Palestinians since 1993.
MEXICO
Ten human heads found
Authorities in a town in Guerrero State made a grisly discovery on Sunday, finding 10 severed human heads near an open-air market, officials said. “They were the severed heads of 10 people, three women and seven men,” police spokesman Arturo Martinez Nunez said. A prosecutor’s office official in Teloloapan, the town where the remains were found, said they were found beside the open-air market. Messages against La Familia drug cartel were found with the heads, authorities said. La Familia is a criminal group active in the nearby state of Michoacan and has frequent turf battles with other crime gangs. President Felipe Calderon has launched a military crackdown against the cartels battling it out for control of the lucrative drug trade, in which about 50,000 Mexicans have lost their lives since 2006.
UNITED KINGDOM
Road privatization mulled
Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and private investors could take control of the nation’s main roads, Prime Minister David Cameron was to announce in his pre-budget speech yesterday. Tolling could also be introduced to help fund new roads as the government seeks to repair infrastructure, Cameron was expected to say, according to his Downing Street office. Cameron has already asked the Department for Transport and the Treasury to carry out a feasibility study on the proposed changes to road financing, results of which will be announced at the end of the year. “We need to look urgently at the options for getting large-scale private investment into the national roads network,” Cameron was to say in his speech. “Road tolling is one option — but we are only considering this for new, not existing, capacity.” He was to argue that much of the nation’s infrastructure is already funded by the private sector and question why the nation’s roads still rely on public finances. Motoring group AA warned that the proposals could be “the thin end of the wedge,” opening the way for a surge in tolling.
BOSNIA
Two killed by landmine
Two men in their 20s died on Sunday, when a landmine left over from the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian War exploded while they were cutting wood in a zone clearly marked as dangerous, authorities said. The fatal accident took place near the northeastern town of Lukavac, national television cited the local civil protection authority as saying. The two men, aged 27 and 28, were collecting wood despite the area being marked as infested with anti-personnel mines laid during the inter-ethnic conflict, which claimed about 100,000 lives, the authorities said. The devices, laid up to 20 years ago, still cover an estimated 1,400km2, 2.8 percent of the national territory. Since the end of the war in 1995, about 580 people have been killed in such landmine explosions. Last year there were five fatalities.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Ex-military chief shot dead
The former head of military intelligence, Colonel Samba Diallo, was shot dead at a bar near his residence in the capital, Bissau, late on Sunday, hours after a presidential election, witnesses and a security source said. Diallo was among the military officials deposed and temporarily jailed in an April 2010 coup within the military that ousted army chief of staff Jose Zamora Induta. A nearby resident said that soldiers fired on Diallo just before midnight and his body was taken away. Another witness said he saw Diallo’s body at a hospital, and a security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the killing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema