NORTH KOREA
Kim Jong-un scolds officials
During a tour of the Mangyongdae funfair in a Pyongyang suburb, leader Kim Jong-un scolded staff for neglecting their duties and failing to serve the people, Korean Central News Agency said yesterday. It is rare for the all-powerful leader to inspect entertainment facilities rather than military units, plants, farms or construction sites. An analyst said the move was intended to “spook” officials and tighten Kim’s grip on the elite. The young leader fumed over poorly maintained pavements, with weeds growing in between broken blocks, amusement facilities with scraped-off paint and the faulty arrangement of bases for trees. “Officials should draw a serious lesson from the tour of Mangyongdae Funfair,” Kim said.
CHINA
Students resort to IV drips
Students in Xiaogang High School, Hubei Province, have resorted to classroom intravenous drips as a study aid to prepare for the nation’s notoriously difficult college entrance exams, state press said on Tuesday. Photographs showing students hooked up to hanging bottles of amino acids went viral on the Web, eliciting shocked concern over how far students will go to get into university. According to a school official, the pre-exam practice has become popular because it helps the students relax, the China Daily reported. “The school will not suspend the practice and we will continue if students want it,” the paper quoted the official as saying.
CHINA
Ai Weiwei case accepted
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) said a court in Beijing has accepted a lawsuit his design firm Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd has filed against the No. 2 Inspection Squad of the Beijing tax bureau for demanding payment of US$2.4 million in back taxes. Ai said the tax office violated the law in handling witnesses, evidence and company accounts in the case. He said the court would announce a hearing date later, but it must take place within three months.
CHINA
S Korea pills claim checked
Beijing is investigating South Korean claims that China is the source of smuggled capsules made from human flesh seized by its customs officials, but has so far found no evidence to back up the claim, state media said yesterday. The gruesome practice came to light on Sunday when South Korean Customs said it had identified 35 attempts to import 17,451 capsules containing the powdered flesh of dead babies, taken as a disease cure or to boost sexual performance. Ministry of Health spokesman Deng Haihua (鄧海華) said on Tuesday that a previous investigation had uncovered no evidence such capsules were made in the country, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported.
MALAYSIA
Kidnap suspects nabbed
Police said they have arrested six suspects linked to the kidnapping of a Dutch boy who was freed after his parents paid a ransom. Twelve-year-old Nayati Moodliar was held for six days this month after being snatched while walking to school in Kuala Lumpur. Police said in a statement yesterday that they had arrested five men and a woman over the past two days. They recovered part of the 300,000 ringgit (US$98,000) ransom and were searching for two more suspects. Nayati’s disappearance sparked wide concern. Prime Minister Mohammad Najib Abdul Razak voiced worries about his safety, while posters of him were pasted across Kuala Lumpur.
UNITED STATES
Senator Lugar loses primary
Senator Richard Lugar, a 35-year veteran of the Senate and one of the leading foreign policy voices in Congress, was defeated in the Indiana Republican primary by a Tea Party-backed challenger on Tuesday. Lugar, 80, is the first Senate incumbent to be ousted in this election year. The loss to Republican state treasurer Richard Mourdock shows the anti-establishment Tea Party movement still has major influence within the Republican party in a presidential election year.
CANADA
Target looks unreachable
The nation will fail to reach its target for reducing greenhouse gases by 2020, according to a government report that predicted that emissions responsible for global warming will actually increase by 7 percent over that time. “The government’s approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to meet Canada’s target for 2020,” said Scott Vaughan, commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development, in his report presented in the House of Commons. Officials said the 2020 target had been to reduce Canada’s emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels, a goal that now appears unattainable.
UNITED STATES
Convict polling well
Just how unpopular is President Barack Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that a man in prison in Texas is getting nearly four out of 10 votes in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary. Keith Judd is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. In Alabama, 18 percent of Democratic voters chose “uncommitted” in the primary rather than vote for Obama.
UNITED STATES
Tanning mom gets doll
A Connecticut novelty company is selling a “tanorexic” action figure based on a deeply tanned New Jersey mother accused of causing skin burns to her young daughter in a tanning booth. Patricia Krentcil has said she loves tanning but wouldn’t — and didn’t — take her then-five-year-old into a tanning booth. Krentcil pleaded not guilty last week to a child endangerment charge. She says her daughter got sunburned outdoors. The blonde, orange-faced doll in a black pantsuit costs US$29.95.
FRANCE
Prevention blocks cancers
Largely preventable or treatable infections with viruses, bacteria and parasites cause about 2 million new cancer cases and 1.5 million cancer deaths each year, a study published yesterday said. This amounted to about one in six of the 12.7 million new cancer cases reported in 2008, said the report in The Lancet Oncology journal. “Application of existing public health methods for infection prevention, such as vaccination, safer injection practice or antimicrobial treatments, could have a substantial effect on the future burden of cancer worldwide,” said the report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.
UNITED STATES
Twitter data posted online
Twitter on Tuesday said that it was trying to figure out how user names and passwords from thousands of accounts apparently wound up posted at an online file sharing Web site. Information posted on Pastebin.com pages appeared to be from about 35,000 Twitter accounts, not counting about 20,000 that seemed to be redundancies, according to a message “tweeted” by the San Francisco firm.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number