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.
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
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