HONG KONG
Suitors drawn by ‘bounty’
A tycoon who offered a US$65 million “marriage bounty” to any man who can win the heart of his lesbian daughter has been inundated with applications from around the globe, a report said yesterday. Cecil Chao (趙世曾) told the South China Morning Post newspaper that around 100 would-be suitors of his 33-year-old daughter, Gigi (趙式芝), had poured into his office since he went public with his offer on Wednesday. One of the applicants, a Frenchman, wrote: “I’m really serious and [despite the fact] I am a man I think I can make this woman happy. I’m as soft as a woman.” Another appeared to offer a menage a trois: “I will win his daughter’s heart and marry her, and my Maid Marian, a gorgeous Brazilian model, will help accomplish that with me.” Gigi has dismissed her father’s behavior and all the attention she is receiving as “seriously distracting.” Chao announced the financial reward of HK$500 million after Gigi reportedly married her same-sex partner of seven years in France earlier this year.
JAPAN
Chinese crew rescued
A dozen Chinese crew members were rescued by the coast guard when their Panama-registered boat caught fire in a bay, an official said yesterday. Television footage showed thick smoke pouring from the Hao Han, a 1,999 tonne cargo vessel, as the ship listed badly in waters off Osaka. The coast guard, which has recently been heavily involved in a standoff with Beijing over disputed islands in the East China Sea, pulled the crew to safety and was tackling the blaze. “There were no injuries among the crew,” a coast guard spokesman said. The cargo vessel left Kagoshima on Friday last week and docked at two other Japanese ports before sailing for China loaded with 1,000 tonnes of scrap metal, he said. Live footage aired by public broadcaster NHK showed a fierce fire on the boat as a coast guard vessel sprayed it with water.
NORTH KOREA
German film wins festival
A German film about an English teacher’s struggle to introduce soccer at a strict school in late 19th-century Germany has won the grand prize at the Pyongyang International Film Festival.
North Korea’s official news agency reports that The Big Dream also won the festival’s award for best actor, while a joint North Korean-European film, Comrade Kim Goes Flying, won for best direction. The biennial film festival closed on Thursday after an eight-day run that offered North Koreans and foreigners the chance to see movies from North Korea as well as France, Britain, Iran, India and Russia. The film festival is the only time North Koreans and foreigners can watch films together at Pyongyang theaters.
GERMANY
Statue found to be meteorite
An ancient Buddhist statue that a Nazi expedition brought back from Tibet shortly before World War II was carved from a meteorite that crashed on Earth thousands of years ago. Elmar Buchner of the University of Stuttgart said on Thursday the statue was brought to Germany by the Schaefer expedition that set out for Tibet in 1938 in part to trace the origins of the Aryan race. The existence of the 10.6kg statue, known as “iron man,” was only revealed in 2007 when it came up for auction, Buchner said. German and Austrian scientists conducted a chemical analysis that shows the statue came from the Chinga meteorite, which crashed in the area of what is now the Russian and Mongolian border around 15,000 years ago. The Nazis were probably attracted to it by a left-facing swastika symbol on its front.
FRANCE
Iconic orangutan dies in zoo
A Sumatran orangutan believed to be the oldest reproductive specimen in captivity has died at a zoo in the western part of the country, a few weeks after celebrating his 50th birthday. Major, a 125kg father of 16 who celebrated his birthday in July, died overnight on Tuesday at the zoo in La Boissiere-du-Dore near Nantes, zoo director Sebastien Laurent said. “I saw him playing on Monday, as he often did, with his children ...” Laurent said. “And on Wednesday the guys found him dead on his bed, his body still warm. He lived at the zoo for 23 years and this is our mascot that has left us, it’s hard,” he said. He said Major’s body would be preserved and stored at the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
UNITED STATES
UN chief in comedy prank
Former victims include Bill Gates, Mick Jagger, Britney Spears and Sarah Palin. This week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined the ranks of those pranked by a Quebec radio station, his office confirmed on Thursday. Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel called Ban on Wednesday afternoon and pretended to be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “He quickly realized it was a prank ... and he took it as it was intended: as a joke,” said Eri Kaneko, associate spokeswoman for Ban’s office. Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state. The duo said in a news release that the world’s top diplomat was rushed out of an important meeting to speak to them. During the call, Ban appears to become suspicious when fake Harper complains he was too busy combing his hair with Krazy Glue to attend this week’s ministerial meeting of the UN General Assembly — a clear dig at the Canadian leader’s immaculate hairdo.
UNITED STATES
Police wary of neo-Nazi fest
The mayor’s office in Boise, Idaho, is fielding numerous complaints about a neo-Nazi music festival planned for early next month, the city’s police department said. Authorities have been on alert since advertisements for Hammerfest 2012 near Boise surfaced online, Sergeant Jeff Basterrechea of the police department’s gang intelligence unit said. The white supremacist group Hammerskin Nation plans to hold the event on Oct. 6, according to the flier circulating online. The gunman who killed six worshipers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin last month described himself as a member. Former neo-Nazi skinhead Marine T.J. Leyden told a news station he previously recruited for the group with events like Hammerfest. Leyden, who famously left the movement in 1996 and has promoted tolerance ever since.
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