CHINA
Siri leads users to brothels
Concerns that the Mandarin version of the Apple iPhone’s new voice-activated assistant “Siri” directs users to brothels has been raised by netizens and lawyers, state media said on Monday. Users were given several options for finding prostitutes upon request, but could not verify if the listings were accurate, the state-run China Daily said. Prostitution is banned in the country, which retains a largely conservative attitude to sex. Nearly 9 million users of microblogging site Sina Weibo commented on the function. One suspected Apple of providing the service intentionally, while another noted how efficient it was at finding brothels, rather than restaurants that serve typical dishes. “When I ask Siri about beef noodle soup or hotpot, she has no idea,” the netizen said. Another message said Siri’s detailed knowledge of brothels puts law enforcement to shame. “A mobile phone can know all this while the police do not?”
VIETNAM
Elephants stomp policeman
A herd of elephants has trampled to death a police officer in a central jungle. The victim and two other men went into the jungle on Saturday to look for apricot trees. Huynh Trung Luan, the director of the elephant conservation center in Daklak Province, said more than 20 wild elephants attacked the men as they returned home that night. Luan said two of the men escaped unhurt. The 42-year-old policeman was found dead on Sunday morning. Luan said the herd became more aggressive after two of its members were killed by villagers in August.
IRAN
National symphony disbands
The national symphony orchestra has been disbanded for lack of funds, musicians said on Monday, another sign of the effects of Western economic sanctions. Orchestra members told the semiofficial ILNA news agency that they have not been paid for three months. The orchestra was reactivated just last year, after a two-year break. The step is likely tied to heightening economic woes in Iran because of government mismanagement and Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear development program. Iran’s orchestra is one of the oldest in the Middle East, founded in the 1930s. It has hosted performances by world famous musicians like Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern in the past.
JAPAN
WWII dud stalls airport
A huge, unexploded World War II bomb has been found buried near the runway of one of the coutnry’s busiest regional airports, forcing all flights to be canceled yesterday, officials said. A worker rebuilding drainage systems near Sendai Airport uncovered the 225kg bomb on Monday evening. Local reports said the bomb was 110cm long and 35cm in diameter. If the bomb explodes, fragments could be scattered more than 1km, NHK news said, adding that officials were mulling an evacuation.
CAMBODIA
Obama to make SE Asia trip
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says US President Barack Obama is expected to visit Southeast Asia in the middle of next month. Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong yesterday said that Obama will travel to the capital, Phnom Penh, for an ASEAN summit. The meeting of heads of state is due to take place from Nov. 18 to Nov. 20, bringing together leaders of the 10-nation bloc. US officials have declined to confirm Obama’s travel plans. Koy Kuong had no further details, but another senior official said Obama is also expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Hun Sen.
CYPRUS
Anti-tank death plot foiled
Three men including a “paranoid” convicted felon allegedly plotted to assassinate the attorney general using an anti-tank weapon, a police investigator told a court on Monday. The court granted a police request to keep the three suspects in police custody for eight days until investigators build their case against them. The suspected ringleader is 61-year-old Andreas Ounoufriou, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the 1996 attempted murder of a judge. The trio faces charges of conspiracy to commit murder and possession of military-grade explosives, a missile launcher and other weapons. Police investigator Ioannis Georgadjis told a Nicosia District Court that Ounoufriou allegedly masterminded the foiled killing of Attorney General Petros Clerides from behind bars a few months before he was due to be released from a four-year sentence for an earlier prison escape.
NETHERLANDS
Jobs’ yacht completed
Steve Jobs’ super-yacht Venus has emerged from a shipbuilder’s yard just over a year after the Apple founder’s death. The approximately 70m long yacht was built by Royal De Vries shipbuilders in Aalsmeer, just south of Amsterdam. According to a posting on Sunday on the tech blog onemorething.nl, the ship will be presented to Jobs’ family, including his widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, and their three children, Reed, Erin and Eve. It will then be packed up and shipped by cargo to the US. Those who worked on the ship each received an iPod nano from the family, the blog said. The bridge features a control panel made up of an array of seven iMac computers. Another Mac can be seen through a porthole above the anchor. Sources told the blog that the ship took six years to design and build. Apple’s top designer, Jonathan Ive, was involved with the design.
GERMANY
Car crash saves life
A road crash may have actually saved the life of a taxi driver, authorities said on Monday. The 50-year-old choked on a sweet and lost control of his cab during a coughing fit while on a job in Wuppertal on Sunday, police said. First he hit a small truck parked at the roadside before losing consciousness with his vehicle headed towards oncoming traffic, hitting another parked car head-on, they said. The impact presumably dislodged the sweet from his throat and the taxi driver regained consciousness.
TURKEY
Secularists defy ban
Police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse thousands of pro-secular protesters who defied a ban by the moderate Islamist government to march on Monday in Ankara to mark Republic Day. Carrying national flags, demonstrators shouted slogans including “Fully independent Turkey” and “We are soldiers of Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk],” referring to the republic’s founding father. The rally began outside the first parliament building in the historic Ulus District. Some in the group were shouting anti-government slogans such as “Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” and “We are here despite the AKP [Justice and Development Party]” government. The Ankara governor’s office had banned the Republic Day rally, saying that security services had received intelligence that groups might be planning “provocative” action.
‘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