INDONESIA
Jet’s ‘black box’ found
Searchers have found the cockpit voice recorder from a Russian passenger jet that smashed into the side of an Indonesian volcano, killing 45 people. The “black box,” collected from the bottom of a 500m ravine on Tuesday, was shattered and badly burned, Tatang Kurniadi, who heads the National Commission on Safety Commission, said yesterday. It had contained both a voice recorder and a flight data recorder, but the latter device remains missing, he said. Experts were analyzing the voice recorder in a lab in Jakarta yesterday, said Mardjono Siswosuwarno, who is heading the investigation.
SOUTH KOREA
Contractor jailed for scam
A businessman has been jailed for three years for supplying potentially defective parts to the country’s oldest atomic power plant, the Busan District Court spokesman said yesterday. The man, identified only as Hwang, was sentenced last Friday for selling recycled turbine valve parts to the Gori nuclear plant near Busan, the spokesman said.
Hwang, 54, cleaned and painted used parts stolen from the plant’s dump by an employee. He then sold them back to the plant, on three occasions since 2008, disguising them as new products. He pocketed about 3 billion won (US$2.6 million) through the fraud, according to the court. The plant employee who stole the scrapped parts was sentenced to three years in prison last month.
INDONESIA
Rare elephant found dead
A critically endangered Sumatran elephant has been found dead in Aceh Province, an official said yesterday, the second death from suspected poisoning within a month. Villagers found the carcass, missing its tusks, in a river in Aceh Jaya district on Tuesday, local forestry official Armidi said, adding it appeared to have been killed about four days earlier. “According to villagers, the elephant had entered a plantation and was lumbering unsteadily. We suspected it might have been poisoned,” Armidi said, adding that investigations to determine the cause of death were ongoing. “Villagers did not know who took its tusks.” There are fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, marking a 50 percent drop in numbers since 1985.
SOUTH KOREA
No ties or hand-driers
Businessmen are being urged to dump their jackets and ties as the summer looms in a bid to save electricity amid tight supplies as offices turn up the air conditioning. The public is also being told that they should carry handkerchiefs to dry their hands, rather than using hot air blowers. “We need all the people to join to curb excessive cooling demand which accounts for 21 percent of summer peak demand,” the economy ministry said in a statement. The statement also ordered 478 big buildings such as department stores and hotels to keep their temperatures at 26?C or above.
PHILIPPINES
Malaysian captive freed
Officials say a Malaysian man has been freed by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants after a year of jungle captivity. Sulu Governor Abdusakur Tan yesterday said Mohammad Nazarudin bin Saidin was released on Friday. It was not immediately clear if any ransom was paid for the victim, a truck driver. Police say the victim was seized by the gunmen while buying geckos in Indanan township in May last year. Officials say the kidnappers demanded a ransom, but the victim’s family could not afford the amount.
COSTA RICA
Justice minister resigns
Justice minister Hernando Paris stepped down on Tuesday, citing personal reasons, the fifth member of President Laura Chinchilla’s Cabinet to leave their posts this year. Paris, who also served in the ministry under Chinchilla’s predecessor, Oscar Arias, announced his departure on Facebook five days ago. “I have reached my personal goals as well as the commitments I had with the President,” he said on Tuesday. Paris’ resignation comes at a time of turmoil for Chinchilla’s Cabinet as tax-evasion and corruption scandals have hit her administration in the last two months. There was no indication that Paris was involved in any wrongdoing.
RUSSIA
Police uproot protest camp
Police uprooted a protest camp in central Moscow that had recently become a center of opposition activity. A Moscow court on Tuesday ruled to support a lawsuit by residents of Chistoprudny Boulevard to evict the activists. Residents of what came to be known as the Occupy Abay camp were ordered to leave by noon yesterday, but police moved in at 5am, evicting several dozens. The camp has few permanent residents, and its population fluctuated from several thousand in the evening to less than a hundred at night. Moscow police said more than 20 activists were detained overnight as they resisted eviction. About 20 more have moved to a square in the west of central Moscow.
UNITED STATES
‘Pink slime’ slimmed down
Beef Products Inc, the maker of a meat product dubbed “pink slime” by food activists, said it is cutting another 86 jobs. Earlier this month, the company said more than 650 positions will be eliminated with the closing of three of its four plants. The new job losses are “directly attributable to a widespread campaign of misinformation” about the company’s ammonia-treated beef, the Dakota Dunes, South Dakota-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. The cuts announced today include corporate staff in South Dakota and reductions at the company’s machine shop and assembly facility in South Sioux City, Nebraska. The company announced earlier this month that it is shutting plants in Amarillo, Texas; Garden City, Kansas; and Waterloo, Iowa, with job cuts effective from Friday next week.
UNITED STATES
Man asks friend to shoot him
Authorities say a New York man had his friend shoot him in the leg because he wanted to know what it feels like to be shot. State police say the shooting occurred on Sunday in the rural town of Stockholm when 25-year-old Shawn Mossow gave in to his friend’s repeated requests and shot him once in the right leg with a .22 caliber rifle. The 24-year-old man is expected to make a full recovery. Police have not released his name. Mossow was charged with reckless endangerment. He is being held in jail on US$10,000 bail.
KENYA
One dead in grenade attack
Police say attackers fired shots and detonated grenades outside a nightclub in the coastal town of Mombasa after they were denied entry, killing one person and injuring four. Aggrey Adoli, the police chief on the coast, said yesterday a security guard died in the hospital while four people were receiving treatment for wounds from the Tuesday night attack. He says the assailants fired shots at security guards who had denied them entry into the club, before detonating the grenades. A pistol was recovered at the scene.
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
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