MACEDONIA
Church bans Facebook
Macedonia’s Orthodox Church on Friday ordered its priests and nuns not to use Facebook or be ready to face unnamed sanctions, church officials said. “Everyone among the clergy will face sanctions if using Facebook,” the church’s spokesman, Bishop Timotej, told reporters. The bishop did not reveal the reasons for the ban, but sources from the church said the measure would be “imposed especially for those expressing personal attitudes on Facebook.” Local media reported that the decision was proposed by one of the senior bishops, Petar, who defended the move saying it was meant to “protect [the faithful] from misleading and manipulations.” The ban seemed to show the rift between senior and junior priests, who have often used social networks to attract younger generations to the church by offering them religious education and advice. However, some of them also expressed their personal views on the political situation in the country, sometimes criticizing the government.
FRANCE
Man dangles from landmark
A Greenpeace activist suspended himself from the Eiffel Tower yesterday to call for the release of 30 people who have spent more than a month in a Russian jail over a protest against oil drilling in the Arctic. After lowering himself from the second tier of the Paris landmark, the man unfurled a large yellow sign saying: “Free the Arctic 30.” He was brought down without incident about two hours later by firemen. Twenty-eight Greenpeace activists and two journalists were arrested last month after trying to scale a Gazprom oil platform off Russia’s northern coast, the country’s first offshore oil platform in the Arctic. Original charges of piracy against the group were lessened on Wednesday to hooliganism, which still carry a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
UNITED STATES
Massacre man paroled
One of three men convicted in the 1983 massacre of 13 people at a Seattle gambling club is being paroled. The Washington Department of Corrections parole board has decided to release Wai Chiu “Tony” Ng after 30 years in prison. He was convicted of robbery and assault for his role in the shooting at the Wah Mee club. Ng will be released within about a month to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and will be deported to Hong Kong. Fourteen people were tied up, robbed and shot in the head in the shootings at Seattle’s Wah Mee club. One man survived to identify the assailants. Ng appeared before the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board in August. He said if he was released, he would not fight deportation back to Hong Kong. Co-defendants Kwan Fai “Willie” Mak and Benjamin Ng were convicted of aggravated murder and are serving life sentences without chance of parole.
COSTA RICA
Man donates arthropods
A US biologist has donated 4,000 arthropods he collected over 62 years to Costa Rica. Richard Whitten has donated his collections of giant scorpions, tarantulas, grasshoppers, butterflies, beetles and other arthropods to the University of Costa Rica. Whitten, who has lived in Costa Rica for 16 years, said on Friday that he and his wife are moving back to the US, where several universities wanted to house the arthropods. Whitten says he decided to give the collection to the Costa Rican university because it promised to permanently exhibit it. He said that leaving his collection behind “is like leaving my children.”
‘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