JORDAN
King endorses media law
King Abdullah II has endorsed controversial amendments to a press and publication law seen by online journalists as a threat to freedom of expression. The king on Monday night issued a decree approving the law in its new form, after parliament passed the amendments that require the country’s 220 news Web sites to obtain licences from the government, which can censor content and hold journalists liable for posted comments. The amendments also stipulate that Web site chief editors must be members of the Jordan Press Association. Journalists and rights activists had urged the king to reject the law. “We refuse to be terrorized,” read a banner carried by journalists during a sit-in on Saturday.
UNITED STATES
Rushdie dismisses threat
Author Salman Rushdie is dismissing the latest threat against his life as just talk. The author of the novel The Satanic Verses says the threat “was essentially one priest in Iran looking for a headline.” Rushdie spoke on Tuesday to about 400 people at a New York Barnes & Noble book store about his newly published memoir, Joseph Anton. The memoir tells of his years in hiding after Iran’s now deceased leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 declared The Satanic Verses blasphemous and called for his death. A semi-official Iranian religious foundation headed by Ayatollah Hassan Saneii has raised the bounty for Rushdie from US$2.8 million to US$3.3 million after recent protests against an anti-Islamic film.
UNITED STATES
System failing black males
More than half the young black men who graduated from high schools in 2010 earned their diploma in four years, an improved graduation rate that still lagged behind that of their white counterparts, according to an education group’s report released yesterday. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, which has tracked graduation rates of black males from US public schools since 2004, said 52 percent of black males who entered high school in the 2006 to 2007 school year graduated in four years. That compared with 78 percent of white, non-Latino males and 58 percent of Latino males.
Venezuela
Group decry use of song
The pop group Los Amigos Invisibles says it is the latest victim of socialist President Hugo Chavez’s wave of expropriations. Local media say the band is demanding a state-owned radio station yank a publicity spot remixing its song Majunche as a re-election campaign plug for Chavez, who is known for his frequent and often uncompensated nationalizations of businesses. The 2004 tune is mostly an instrumental jam in which the singers occasionally shout majunche, which roughly translates as “loser.” Chavez, up for re-election on Oct. 7, uses the epithet to describe opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
UNITED STATES
Burger poll beefs up election
With burgers as ballots, a restaurant in the capital is conducting its own gourmet straw poll in the run-up to national elections on Nov. 6. BLT Steak is giving patrons a choice of hamburgers named after President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan. Voting ends on Oct. 2, just over a month before polling day. The Obama burger is the most expensive at US$28 because “he’s the president” and deserves the best, manager Adam Sanders said.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in