UAE
Man sentenced for spying
A United Arab Emirates (UAE) national was sentenced to seven years in jail yesterday after confessing to gathering intelligence for a foreign country, state news agency WAM reported. The Federal Supreme Court found Salem Musa Feiruz Khamees, a retired member of the armed forces married to an Iranian woman, guilty of passing on to a foreign country information that harms national security and relations with friendly nations, it said. The agency did not identify clearly the country he was providing intelligence to. Khamees was passing information to agents working as employees of a foreign consulate to whom he was introduced in order to settle a problem that his wife had, it said. The agents asked him for military information in return, it added. Police found in his possession documents about the country’s armed forces and its areas of deployment, WAM said.
SOUTH KOREA
Court rejects death penalty
The Supreme Court yesterday rejected arguments for reinstating the death sentence imposed on a Chinese national convicted of a gruesome murder. Wu Yuanchun, an ethnic Korean, was originally sentenced to death for the rape, murder and dismemberment of a 28-year-old woman in Suwon in April last year. Wu, a migrant worker, spent six hours cutting the body into 365 pieces and individually wrapping each one in plastic. The case triggered a backlash against police when it was revealed that the victim had called an emergency number as the attack was taking place. The phone line remained open for eight minutes and the victim could be heard screaming in pain and begging for her life. In June last year, a district court sentenced Wu to death, having accepted the prosecution’s argument that the murder was premeditated and that Wu had intended to sell the body parts. However, the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in October by an appeals court.
QATAR
Taliban office announced
Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani on Tuesday said that preparations were under way to open a political office for the Taliban militia in Doha for talks with other Afghan parties. The opening of the office aims to “facilitate dialogue between the Taliban and other political parties in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that it is “very important that a dialogue start before the withdrawal of US troops in 2014.” In April last year, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khaled al-Attiyah said the country was “moving towards the opening of a [Taliban] political office to reactivate dialogue between all sides.”
CHINA
Iconic revolutionary dies
Yang Baibing (楊白冰), a veteran revolutionary and strong proponent of economic liberalization, has died. He was 92. Along with his more famous half-brother, former president Yang Shangkun (楊尚昆), Yang Baibing had been among the most powerful leaders in the country. However, he was forced into retirement in 1992 and his supporters were purged from the officer corps by former president Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), who feared that the Yang brothers were accumulating too much power. Yang Baibing joined the Communist Party in 1938 and battled both Japanese invaders and Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Nationalists before the communist seizure of power in 1949. A powerful backer of the bloody military crackdown on 1989 pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square, Yang Baibing later stood by Deng in his struggle against conservatives.
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
‘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
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