CHINA
City may ease one child law
The southern city of Guangzhou has proposed revisions to its family planning regulations that would allow more people to have more than one child, the China Daily reported yesterday. The proposals include eight situations in which couples would be allowed to have another child, the newspaper reported, citing a draft of the revised rules. It did not say how many situations are included in the current regulations. The revised rules include allowing couples, when one or both spouse have been previously married, to have a child if one person has had no more than two children from previous marriages and the other has had no children. Current rules allow such couples to have a child if one person has had no more than one child in a previous marriage and the other has had none, the newspaper reported. Families in Guangzhou have an average of 2.73 people, compared with the national average of 3.10, the newspaper reported.
THAILAND
PM touts feminine diplomacy
The territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a diplomatic minefield, but Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra hopes to bring something new to the negotiating table: a woman’s touch. Yingluck told the Asia Society on Wednesday that as a nonclaimant state on good terms with all parties involved, Thailand wants to help. While stressing she was not underestimating the challenge, Yingluck said: “Perhaps I can bring a bit of a woman’s touch to addressing this conflict.” Thailand is ASEAN’s liaison with China, which claims most of the sea and has conflicting claims with several ASEAN members. Diplomatic efforts to frame a code of conduct have been heavy-going. Yingluck was a political novice before becoming the nation’s first female prime minister last year.
AFGHANISTAN
US general faces sex charges
A decorated army general is facing charges of forcible sodomy and engaging in inappropriate relationships stemming from allegations that got him sent home from Afghanistan this year, officials said on Wednesday. Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, who is based at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, has also been charged with wrongful sexual conduct, possessing alcohol and pornography while deployed, and mistreating subordinates, military officials said in a statement. Sinclair, a 27-year army veteran, had served as a deputy commander for support in Afghanistan. At least some of the allegations involved inappropriate relationships with female subordinates during his service there, an official said, speaking on condition on anonymity.
AFGHANISTAN
Al-Qaeda posts Osama film
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri resurfaced for the second time in a month on Wednesday in an online video on the life of his late predecessor Osama bin Laden. In the almost hour-long video, the third in a series entitled Days with the Imam, Zawahiri narrates stories about bin Laden, who was killed by US Navy SEALs last year in May in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Dressed in a white thawb cloak and turban, Zawahiri revealed “for those who do not know” that bin Laden was left blind in the right eye after an accident in his youth. He also said bin Laden was a former member of the Saudi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood before being expelled for insisting on jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Bin Laden went to Pakistan to deliver cash aid to the jihadists in Peshawar, but joined the armed struggle, Zawahiri said.
THE GAMBIA
Drug smuggler arrested
Police have arrested a Nigerian drug smuggler who confessed to swallowing 72 cocaine pellets, the anti-narcotics agency of the west African nation said on Wednesday. Airport security was tipped off by the intelligence services that a suspected smuggler had boarded a Nigerian airliner heading to the capital, Banjul. “Upon arrival at the airport with Arik airlines, the suspect was arrested, interrogated and he denied having anything,” said Abdoulie Ceesay, the anti-drug agency’s spokesperson. “He was then kept for some time under observation and ... he then started to confess to the officers that he indeed swallowed 72 pellets of cocaine,” Ceesay said.
UNITED STATES
Award-winning singer dies
American crooner Andy Williams, whose string of hits like Moon River and annual Christmas TV shows made him a national treasure, has died aged 84 after losing his battle with cancer. Wildly popular in the 1960s, with 18 gold and three platinum records to his name, the clean-cut master of easy listening and the sentimental soundtrack signed what at the time was the biggest US recording contract. Born in Wall Lake, Iowa, Howard Andrew Williams sang in his family’s church choir — setting off on what was to become a 75-year professional singing career. On his way to earning more gold albums than any other solo performer bar Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis and Elvis Presley, Williams won an Oscar for his rendition of Moon River in the 1961 hit film Breakfast at Tiffanys.
SPAIN
Asian film shown at festival
Chinese director Emily Tang’s (唐曉白) latest film, All Apologies, about two couples linked by the death of a child, had its world premiere yesterday at the San Sebastian film festival. The movie is the only film from Asia among the 14 in competition for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Shell. It offers a critical look at the great lengths some couples go to have a male child in contemporary China as well as of women’s often submissive role in Chinese society. “In China it is very important to have a male child,” Tang, 42, told reporters at the festival, one of Europe’s top international film gatherings. “The most important thing for the main character is to have a boy. This leads him to try to have a son at any prices and way possible.”
UNITED STATES
Corpse festival to continue
The frozen corpse that has inspired a Colorado town’s whimsical “Frozen Dead Guy Days” celebration may soon be put on ice somewhere else, but festival organizers said the body’s removal will not have a chilling effect on the annual event. “We will continue on whether or not Bredo Morstoel is here,” festival owner Amanda MacDonald said on Wednesday of the man whose body has been packed in dry ice outside Nederland, Colorado, since 1993. A financial dispute between Morstoel’s grandson, Tryve Bauge, and the man hired to replenish the dry ice on a monthly basis, Bo Shaffer, has led to Bauge threatening to move his grandfather’s body out of Colorado. Morstoel died of heart failure in his native Norway in 1989, and Bauge had his grandfather’s body frozen and transported to a cryonics facility in California. Ultimately he had the corpse moved to Nederland. At first, townspeople in the mountain village were aghast at the thought of a frozen body being stored in their midst. However, they ultimately embraced the idea of an annual festival surrounding its most famous, albeit deceased, resident.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number