UNITED STATES
Scouts told to surrender files
A California appellate court has upheld a Santa Barbara judge’s order saying the Boy Scouts of America must surrender decades of confidential files detailing alleged child sex abuse. A Scouts spokesman told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that the organization will appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. A lawsuit alleges that a local Scouts official tried to keep a boy’s mother from reporting his 2007 abuse by a volunteer leader to police. The youth group denies the allegations. Lawyers for the former Scout who was sexually abused by a volunteer leader in 2007 say the files they seek will expose a culture of hidden sexual abuse.
MEXICO
Crash theft suspects arrested
Officials say two state police officers have been arrested on suspicion of stealing unspecified items from the scene of the plane crash that killed Mexican-American superstar Jenni Rivera. The Nuevo Leon state government said authorities found images of the scene on the smartphone of one of the officers, who is 23, while trying to determine now the media got photographs of the secured site, including images of body parts and personal documents.
CHINA
Knife attacker injures 23
Police said 22 children and one adult have been injured in a knife attack outside a primary school in central China. A police officer said the attack in the village of Chengping, Henan Province, happened shortly before 8am yesterday as students were arriving for classes. The officer said the attacker, 36-year-old local villager Min Yingjun, is now in police custody. A county hospital administrator said the man first attacked an elderly woman, then students, before being subdued by security guards who have been posted across China following a spate of school attacks in recent years.
CHINA
Officials crack down on cult
Authorities have launched a crackdown on a cult it said is calling for a “decisive battle” to slay the “Red Dragon” Communist Party, and which has been spreading doomsday rumors, state media said yesterday. In recent weeks, hundreds of members of the “Almighty God” group have clashed with police, sometimes outside government buildings, in central Henan, northern Shaanxi and southwestern Gansu provinces, according to popular microblogs. The group has “incited followers to launch a decisive battle with the ‘Big Red Dragon,’ to make the ‘Red Dragon’ extinct and to establish the reign of the kingdom of the ‘Almighty God,’” the Shaanxi Daily said on its Web site.
SRI LANKA
Ministry defends China role
Officials have defended China’s increased naval presence in the Indian Ocean and rejected claims that it is a threat to regional power India, the defense ministry said yesterday. The ministry quoted its top official, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who said that Colombo understood China’s growing interest in the region and insisted that their bilateral cooperation was purely commercial. “It is obvious that the safety and stability of the Indian Ocean is critical for China’s energy security, and its increasing interest and increasing naval presence in this region is quite understandable,” Rajapakse said. Rajapakse said that China was carrying out major infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Maldives, Pakistan and at the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
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