INDIA
Tea to be national drink
The country is to declare tea as its national drink to celebrate the life of a pioneering tea-planter who was hanged by British colonial rulers for taking part in the rebellion of 1857. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Saturday announced the decision while on a visit to Assam, the tea-producing northeastern state that borders on Bhutan and Bangladesh. Assam was the home state of Maniram Dewan, who is celebrated for introducing commercial tea production to the region and for his role in a plot to throw the British out of Assam during the 1857 mutiny. The uprising, which is often called the Sepoy Mutiny, started in Meerut, a city close to New Delhi, and spread across the north before being brutally crushed by British forces with many Indian soldiers and civilians killed. “The drink would be accorded national drink status by April 17 next year to coincide with the 212th birth anniversary of first Assamese tea-planter and Sepoy Mutiny leader Maniram Dewan,” Ahluwalia said. He added that tea should also be celebrated as “half of the tea industry labor comprises women and is the largest employer in the organized sector.”
CHINA
Mayor torches factory
A mayor in the north has been arrested on suspicion of ordering the torching of a factory that made gelatin capsules illegally from industrial waste. State broadcaster CCTV said yesterday that Song Jiangxin had been found to have made a telephone call ordering that the factory in Hebei Province be set ablaze and all records destroyed. Song’s brother owns the factory. The scandal is the latest to rock the country’s pharmaceutical industry, which sufferers from abundant fakery and substandard ingredients. Another 23 people in the east have also been arrested on suspicion of using the Hebei factory’s capsules, which contain dangerous levels of the chemical chromium.
YEMEN
French official kidnapped
A French official of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was kidnapped by armed men on Saturday while traveling from the north to the Red Sea port city of Hudaida, the ICRC said. Dibeh Fakhr, an ICRC spokeswoman in Sana’a, said the man who works in the northern city of Saada was kidnapped late on Saturday about 30km from Hudaida. “He was with two Yemeni drivers who the kidnappers released shortly afterward,” Fakhr said. “Until now we have no contact with the kidnappers or our employee.” It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the kidnapping, but seizing foreigners or Yemenis is common in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, and most hostages are freed unharmed.
SOUTH KOREA
Athlete-legislator quits
A South Korean International Olympic Committee (IOC) athlete member and lawmaker-elect has reportedly quit his political party over plagiarism allegations. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Moon Dae-sung, a gold medalist in taekwondo, left the ruling conservative party on Friday after his university said much of his doctoral thesis plagiarized another person’s work. The 36-year-old Moon was quoted as saying he was sorry for “causing trouble.” He won his first parliamentary seat in recent elections. Moon is not the only IOC member to come under fire for alleged academic cheating. Pal Schmitt resigned as Hungarian president during a plagiarism scandal earlier this month.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Fraudster extradited to UK
Police on Saturday said that fugitive multimillionaire fraudster Michael Brown had been flown to Spain, from where he would be turned over to British officials. Brown was arrested in January in the tourist town of Punta Cana. Police said he had been living in the country under the name Darren Nally. Brown is accused of duping four clients out of US$62 million. He was sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail in 2008 after being convicted of fraud. Police said he was also charged with defrauding people in Punta Cana, but the alleged victims dropped their complaints so he could be extradited.
CANADA
Montreal protesters arrested
Police arrested dozens of protesters in Montreal on Saturday, a day after violent clashes between officers and demonstrators denouncing a plan to develop northern Quebec. Several hundred people gathered about midday outside the Palais des Congres conference center, which is hosting a conference on Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s plan for mining in the north. Police dispersed the protesters and then declared their protest illegal. Montreal police spokesman Daniel Lacoursiere said 90 people were arrested. A major protest bringing together environmentalists, students and opponents of the development plan was scheduled for yesterday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Robin Gibb out of coma
Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb has woken from a coma more than a week after he lost consciousness, the BBC reported on Saturday. Gibb, 62, has begun to show signs of recovery and has been able to nod and communicate with his family, spokesman Doug Wright was quoted as saying by the BBC. Wright could not be immediately reached to confirm the report. The singer contracted pneumonia and fell into a coma at a central London hospital earlier this month. He had been receiving treatment for colon and liver cancer.
NETHERLANDS
Trains collide in Amsterdam
Two passenger trains collided head-on near an Amsterdam park, injuring scores of people. National Police Corps spokesman Ed Kraszewski told Amsterdam local news network AT5 that about 70 people had minor injuries and 42 were “seriously or very seriously injured” in Saturday’s crash. Although the damage did not appear too severe from the outside, Kraszewski said the carriages on one of the trains were spacious and that might have led to injuries. It was not immediately clear how the two trains ended up traveling toward one another on the same track. Kraszewski said the cause of the crash would be investigated.
MOROCCO
High speed rail defended
Minister of Equipment and Transport Abdelaziz Rebbah has for the first time defended a US$3 billion high speed rail project from critics who call it wasteful. At a press conference on Saturday, Rebbah said the high speed train line would be “one of the best ways to improve the nation’s competitiveness.” The press conference was held one day after the minister walked out of a debate on the project, calling its critics insulting. Inaugurated by King Mohammed VI and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in September last year, the new line will stretch from the port of Tangiers to the commercial capital of Casablanca, 300km away. Critics have dismissed it as a vanity project and said the money would be better spent developing existing rail lines and focusing on flagging health and education.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was