HONG KONG
App catches censored posts
Researchers have developed software able to identify censored posts on China’s main microblog, they said yesterday. Called “WeiboScope,” the program developed as a project at the University of Hong Kong is able to detect politically sensitive posts deleted by censors on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. Beijing regularly blocks Internet searches under a vast online censorship system known as the Great Firewall of China, but the growing popularity of microblogs such as Sina Weibo has posed the authorities a new challenge. The study showed posts including names such as disgraced Chongqing Communist Party boss Bo Xilai (薄熙來) and dissident Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠) that had been frequently deleted in the past few months. Chinese authorities announced plans earlier this month to tighten control of microblogs, including making their users register with their real names.
AUSTRALIA
Asylum-seeker bill defeated
A bill to allow boat people to be sent offshore for processing was defeated in the senate yesterday, leaving the divisive issue of asylum seekers at a stalemate. The bill had passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday after an emotional debate sparked by another crowded asylum-seeker boat sinking off Christmas Island. However, it was doomed to fail in the upper house, with the conservative opposition and the Australian Greens vowing to block it. If passed, it would have allowed the government to implement a people-swap deal with Malaysia and permit the reopening of a detention center in Nauru.
PHILIPPINES
Sobriety tests for police
After reports of boozing on the job, traffic police in Metro Manila will be required to undergo breathalyser tests, said Yves Gonzales, director of the region’s traffic discipline office. The new policy covering the 1,400 Metro Manila traffic enforcers was imposed following complaints about some personnel “drinking on duty,” he said, adding that the tests would be conducted at random as the enforcers reported for duty.
HONG KONG
Pangolin scales seized
Customs authorities have seized 208kg of endangered pangolin scales, which are in demand for traditional medicine, especially on the mainland. They said the pangolin scales, worth up to HK$1.7 million (US$219,000), were confiscated on Tuesday in the town of Sai Kung, where seven men were loading them onto a speedboat. The suspects fled on a speedboat and escaped into mainland waters after a high-speed chase by marine police. Authorities were still investigating the scales’ destination. Also seized were 11kg of birds’ nest, as well as 1,600 computer hard disks, 7,350 mobile phones and a vehicle, with the goods estimated to be worth HK$4.7 million.
INDIA
Mukherjee files nomination
Former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday filed his nomination papers to contest next month’s presidential election. The 77-year-old politician was selected last month as the ruling coalition’s nominee to succeed President Pratibha Patil, despite some clashes between various coalition partners as to whom would make the best candidate. “I am grateful to them as they have reposed faith in me to occupy the office which was occupied in past by great stalwarts of this country,” Mukherjee told reporters after filing his papers. He will face off against former parliamentary speaker P.A. Sangma in the July 19 election.
TANZANIA
Dozens suffocate in truck
Deputy Home Affairs Minister Pereira Silima said on Wednesday that 43 Ethiopians and Somalians suffocated in a truck they were being smuggled in. State television said the bodies were thrown off the truck and dumped in the bush after the driver of the truck realized some of the people he was smuggling had perished. About 70 people in the truck survived and were receiving medical treatment and being questioned by police.
ECUADOR
No more for US school
Defense Minister Miguel Carvajal says government will stop sending military and police officers for training at the US Defense Department-run school formerly known as School of the Americas. Opponents of the school, currently located at Fort Benning, Georgia, blame it for human rights abuses in Latin America by foreign military officers trained there. Carvajal’s announcement came after President Rafael Correa met on Wednesday with a delegation from School of the Americas Watch, an advocacy group that has campaigned since 1990 to close down the school now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Venezuela stopped sending officers there in 2004, Argentina and Uruguay in 2006 and Costa Rica in 2007.
GUATEMALA
Traffickers headed to jail
A court sentenced 36 alleged members of a powerful Mexican drug cartel to prison on Wednesday for various crimes, including dismembering a state prosecutor who was investigating the gang. Judges determined that the three dozen gang members, including one woman, were responsible for at least three murders in the northern region of Peten last year. The court also handed out prison sentences from two to 158 years for crimes ranging from drug possession, conspiracy, trafficking arms and murder. Seven of those arrested were found responsible for kidnapping and decapitating prosecutor Allan Stowlinsky in Coban, leaving his arms and legs in bags in front of his office and his head in a central market.
CANADA
Court upholds protest law
A court in Quebec Province on Wednesday rejected a petition to scrap provisions of a controversial law enacted to quell student protests against tuition hikes. Special Law 78 was passed on May 18 in the wake of clashes between police and students fighting an 82 percent hike in tuition at universities in the French-speaking province. It requires organizers to give police at least eight hours advance warning of times and locations of protest marches, with hefty fines imposed for failing to do so. Opponents say it breaches their rights of assembly and free expression. Judge Francois Rolland, in explaining his ruling, wrote that the sections in question “do not prevent protests, even if certain limitations are imposed.”
UNITED KINGDOM
White Cliffs appeal launched
The National Trust launched an appeal on Wednesday to buy a stretch of the White Cliffs of Dover, one of England’s most recognizable natural landmarks. In its largest ever fundraising operation for a length of coastline, the Trust needs to raise £1.2 million (US$1.9 million) to buy a stretch of the cliffs less than 1.6km long and safeguard the future of the famous landscape. The charity wants to improve public access to the chalk cliffs and boost the habitat for wildlife. The cliffs are often the first sight for visitors arriving in England by sea.
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