VIETNAM
No drugs, no executions
Hundreds of death row prisoners have been given a reprieve of sorts due to a shortage of the drug used for lethal injections, a newspaper said yesterday. Death by firing squad was replaced by lethal injections to reduce suffering in July last year, but police have failed to execute anyone since. “In the past year, the execution of more than 400 inmates has not been able to go ahead,” Deputy Police Minister Dang Van Hieu was quoted by Tuoi Tre newspaper as saying. He said imports of the unspecified drug “had proved difficult.”
BANGLADESH
Journalists attacked by gang
Nine journalists were wounded when an unidentified gang wielding machetes stormed the offices of prominent online media outlet bdnews24.com and attacked staff, police said yesterday. About eight young men launched the bloody assault on Monday evening before fleeing the scene, deputy commissioner of Dhaka police Lutful Kabir said. “Three seriously injured people were admitted to a clinic. Their condition is stable,” Kabir said, adding that the motive of the attack was unknown. Bdnews24.com news editor Gazi Nasir Uddin Ahmed said he was uncertain if the the attack was planned.
CHINA
Six held for prostituting kids
Police have arrested six people for suspected involvement in an under-age prostitution ring and are also seeking to charge a local government official, state media said yesterday. More than 20 school-age children were recruited into the ring in Zhejiang Province’s Yongkang City, according to the China Daily newspaper, which said suspects included a local village leader. A Yongkang police statement said the organizer had been recruiting children to be prostitutes since February last year. Police raided the premises last month, detaining 10 people, the statement said, without saying how many were formally charged. The Global Times newspaper said those involved could be charged with rape because criminal law prohibits sex with a minor under the age of 14.
VIETNAM
Police fight tiger poachers
Police said yesterday they had seized three tiger carcasses after being shot at by smugglers who were transporting the dead animals to Hanoi. “We arrested the driver of the car, but his accomplice fled after shooting at us,” said Tran Huu Hong, head of the environmental police office in central Nghe An province, where the tigers were seized on Monday. “We will examine the carcasses of the three tigers to determine their origin,” he said. There are fewer than 50 tigers living wild in remote forests across Vietnam. Worldwide, as few as 3,200 of the big cats remain in the wild.
JAPAN
Phone detects radiation
Mobile phone operator SoftBank Corp said yesterday it would soon start selling smartphones with radiation detectors, tapping into concerns that atomic hotspots remain along the eastern coast more than a year after the Fukushima crisis. “The threat from the nuclear accident cannot be seen by the human eye and continues to be a concern for many people, especially for mothers with small children,” SoftBank founder and president Masayoshi Son said. The smartphone will include customized IC chips made by Sharp Corp that measure radiation levels in microsieverts per hour.
PERU
State of emergency called
At least two people were killed when police used tear gas to put down a violent demonstration against Swiss-owned Xstrata staged by striking miners and townspeople, officials said. Prime Minister Oscar Valdes declared a state of emergency late on Monday, saying it was needed to “safeguard public security and allow free transit” after the two were killed and a provincial prosecutor was briefly kidnapped. Valdes said at a press conference in Lima that the 30-day decree limiting personal freedoms was necessary, because “this is not a peaceful demonstration.” Hundreds of demonstrators had lugged tree trunks and boulders into roads in the Espinar area of Cusco in the south to protest what they say is the mining company’s pollution of the Salado and Canipia rivers.
UNITED STATES
Face-eating man shot dead
Police in Miami are investigating an attack that led an officer to shoot dead a naked man who had bitten off the face of another naked man, leaving him in critical condition. The bizarre attack near the MacArthur Causeway on Saturday attracted the attention of passing drivers and several onlookers who alerted police and made attempts to halt the macabre spectacle, reports said. “I told him to get off and the guy just kept eating the other guy,” witness Larry Vega told the WSVN-Fox 7 station, describing it as something out of a horror movie with “blood all over the place.” Police then approached the attacker and told him to stop eating the man’s face, but he continued to bite into the victim, reportedly a homeless man. “The guy just stood, his head up ... with pieces of flesh in his mouth and growled,” Vega said, and would not stop eating the victim’s face. A police officer fired shots that hit the man, but the attacker kept chewing on the victim’s flesh — more shots were fired, eventually killing him, the Miami Herald said.
VENEZUELA
‘Missions’ will be safe
President Hugo Chavez suggested on Monday that ruling party lawmakers could amend the constitution to institutionalize dozens of his government’s banner social programs. Chavez said his allies in the National Assembly could consider amending the constitution to prevent opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles from dismantling the social programs, called “missions,” if he wins the Oct. 7 presidential election. Capriles denies that he would put an end to the social programs, which are popular among the country’s poor majority.
UNITED STATES
Storm splashes southeast
Tropical Storm Beryl cut a soggy path across the southeast on Monday after swirling ashore in Florida at near-hurricane strength. The second named storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season lashed the east coast from north Florida to southern parts of North Carolina and created a risk of flooding inland, even after it was downgraded to a tropical depression late on Monday morning.
CANADA
Student talks to resume
Talks between students and the Quebec provincial government aimed at ending more than three months of protests over higher tuition fees were set to resume yesterday after the arrest of 84 protesters. The demonstrators were arrested near the talks venue in Quebec City shortly after the negotiators had adjourned for the night. A police officer at the scene said the protesters were arrested for blocking traffic and would be fined US$400 each and released.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At 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
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