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.
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