SRI LANKA
Swallowed gem recovered
Police on Saturday said they had recovered a stolen diamond worth US$13,600 that was swallowed by a Chinese man at a gem exhibition after he was administered a dose of laxatives. The 32-year-old man swallowed the 1.5-carat diamond on Wednesday while at a stall at an annual gem and jewelery show in Colombo. The man swallowed the diamond while showing interest in buying gems from the exhibition stall. He was administered laxatives in hospital. The diamond’s owner, Suresh de Silva, of the Belgrade International gem store, said the man had offered to pay for the 7.2mm-diameter stone, but exhibition organizers wanted to press charges.
China
Prize nominees announced
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Thailand’s prime minister and Microsoft founder Bill Gates are among those nominated for an alternative “peace prize.” Organizers of the Confucius Peace Prize yesterday announced the nominees for the accolade. The China International Peace Research Center launched the prize in 2010 in an apparent attempt to counter that year’s Nobel Peace Prize which went to jailed Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for co-authoring an appeal for political reform. Liu’s win enraged the government and nationalists, who accused the Nobel committee of interfering in the country’s legal system as part of a plot to bring the nation down in disgrace. The award’s sponsors are professors and academics who say they are independent of the Chinese government. The 2010 prize went to Taiwan’s former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) for having “built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan.”
UNITED STATES
President amuses crowd
President Barack Obama was winning laughs at a packed Florida restaurant on the campaign trail on Saturday, where he was introduced to a boy born in his home state, Hawaii. At a bustling eatery Gator’s Dockside, the president sidled up to a table of 10 people, including five children, at which a woman signaled to Obama that one youngster was born in Hawaii. “You were born in Hawaii? You have a birth certificate?” Obama said to the boy, whose table burst into laughter. The president long has been a target of “birther” theorists who have suggested his Hawaii birth certificate was a fake, and he was perhaps ineligible for high office.
UNITED STATES
Man stores human remains
A former medical examiner has been arrested on charges of keeping human remains in a rented storage unit in the Florida Panhandle. Michael Berkland, 57, was arrested on Friday on charges of improper storage of hazardous waste, keeping a public nuisance and driving with a suspended license. He was released from jail on US$10,000 bail. Berkland’s attorney, Eric Stevenson, told the Pensacola News Journal that he and Berkland will start preparing their defense this week. US State Attorney Bill Eddins said more charges may be filed. Crudely preserved brains, hearts, lungs and other organs and specimens were discovered in more than 100 containers last month in a Pensacola storage unit that Berkland had rented for about three years. The unit was auctioned off after Berkland defaulted on his payments, according to an arrest affidavit. Berkland had declared the contents to be household goods and equipment.
FRANCE
Paul McCartney given award
The Elysee Palace says former Beatle Paul McCartney has been decorated with the Legion of Honor for services to music. On Saturday, the presidential office said that 70-year-old McCartney — who sang and co-wrote hits like Hey Jude and Yesterday — was decorated at the rank of officer by President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace, with members of McCartney’s family attending. McCartney joins the ranks of other singers to have received the honor. Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli were similarly honored by former president Nicolas Sarkozy. McCartney — often referred to as “Sir Paul” or “Macca” in his native Britain — has already received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.
FRANCE
Strauss-Kahn finds new lady
Disgraced ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has a new girlfriend who works for a well-known television channel, glossy French weekly VSD said on Friday, printing photographs of the two together. His new love interest was a “bubbly 40-something” with a “senior job in a big television chain,” it said and identified her as Myriam. The photographs showed them on holiday in Corsica. The article is titled “DSK, he is forgetting Anne with another.” It claimed that with his new girlfriend, “DSK has become a gentleman again.” Strauss-Kahn’s wife of some two decades, Anne Sinclair, recently confirmed their split. A former television journalist and the heiress to a large fortune, Sinclair now runs the French edition of the Huffington Post.
UNITED KINGDOM
Archbishop feels overworked
The outgoing archbishop of Canterbury said his dual role as the head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion was too much for one person and should be divided in the future. Rowan Williams, who steps down in December, told the Daily Telegraph he believed a more presidential figure should take on the wider role of guiding the Communion, a loose federation of 38 national and regional churches. Discussions were under way on an overhaul of the Communion’s organization that could split the archbishop’s responsibilities, the newspaper reported him as saying in an interview published on Saturday.
CAR
Jailed safari man freed
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says a British safari driver jailed in the African country on suspicion of killing 13 people has returned to Britain after being cleared of all charges. David Simpson, 24, was arrested on March 26 after he reported the discovery of 13 bodies with bound hands and machete wounds by a small-scale gold mine in the eastern part of the landlocked nation. He was released last month after all charges were dropped, having spent five months incarcerated, but had to wait to return to the UK.
IRAN
Group celebrates freedom
A US group monitoring religious freedoms has hailed the release of a Christian pastor after nearly three years in custody in Iran. A statement by the US Commission of International Religious Freedom says it welcomes the release of Youcef Nadarkhani and urges Iran to free other “prisoners of conscience.” Nadarkhani had been held since October 2009 amid conflicting reports on the charges against him. International rights groups said he faced the death sentence for refusing to renounce his Christian faith after he converted from Islam as a teenager.
CANADA
Johnny Depp in justice move
Actor Johnny Depp a said on Saturday he and Damien Echols, one of three men who claim to have been wrongly convicted for alleged satanic ritual murders in 1993, got tattoos to mark their special bond after Echols was released from prison last year. “There was an instant connection, some brotherly kind of love there,” Depp told a press conference at the world premiere in Toronto of Amy Berg’s film West of Memphis, which chronicles the miscarriage of justice that sent three purportedly innocent men to jail. “It was instant,” he said. “To finally see Damien arrive at my house, on my doorstep, was moving and it was a celebration. It was beautiful. We had Tater Tots and tacos and things took their natural course and we ended up at the tattoo parlor.” Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr and Jason Baldwin were tried and convicted in 1994 of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Prosecutors alleged the children were killed as part of a satanic ritual. However, new forensic evidence presented last year led them to reach a deal with prosecutors which allowed them to assert their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them.
CANADA
Pop art adverts launched
Andy Warhol created pop art icons when he put Campbell’s soup cans in paintings in 1962. Fifty years later, the paintings are inspiring the cans, in a limited edition homage to the artist. To celebrate the anniversary of Warhol’s work, 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans — which helped launch pop art as a major art movement — the soup company is redesigning the classic red-and-white labels in orange, blue, teal and rose. The company recalled that Warhol, who died in 1987 at age 58, once said he painted the cans because “I used to have the same [Campbell’s soup] lunch every day for 20 years.”
CANADA
Niagra Falls torso identified
The human torso found at the foot of the Niagara Falls last month belonged to an US woman who lived near the Rainbow Bridge linking the US and Canada, police said on Friday. The headless torso was found on Aug. 29. Passersby had spotted the torso floating on the lower Niagara River, near the Rainbow Bridge. The limbs and head had been severed. DNA tests helped police identify the victim as Loretta Jo Gates, 30. Police said they were investigating the crime as a homicide. She had disappeared on Aug. 25 from the US city of Niagara Falls, the Niagara Regional Police Service said. US and Canadian police are investigating the crime jointly. The victim was named just a day after police identified another torso found in a suitcase in Lake Ontario, saying it belonged to 41-year-old Liu Guanghua, a Chinese Canadian woman. Liu disappeared on Aug. 11. The woman’s estranged boyfriend has been arrested in connection with the killing.
UNITED STATES
Eastwood gives insight
Clint Eastwood has admitted he winged it at the Republican National Convention, deciding only at the last minute to ad lib a conversation with an empty chair, in remarks published on Friday. In his first public comment on the furor triggered by his eye-brow-raising routine, the Hollywood icon said he made it clear to Mitt Romney’s aides that they could not dictate what he would do. “They vet most of the people ... but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say,’” he told his local paper, the Carmel Pine Cone, in an interview.
‘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