JAPAN
Snow storm disrupts travel
A snow storm hit Japan yesterday, disrupting rail and road travel, grounding more than 100 flights and adding to the piles left behind by an earlier blanketing. Up to 30cm of snow was forecast for some parts of the country by this morning, a week after the heaviest snowfall in decades left at least 11 people dead and more than 1,200 injured. The weather agency also warned of heavy snow in western and central Japan, as well as strong winds and high waves along coastal areas. The storm caused delays on the Shinkansen bullet-train services. Japan Airlines said it had cancelled 77 flights yesterday day and All Nippon Airways grounded 40 flights across the nation. Jiji Press said 16,000 air passengers were affected. Forecasters said the bad weather would continue into today.
CHINA
Gay activists kiss in protest
A group of gay and lesbian activists staged a Valentine’s Day kissing protest in Beijing yesterday aimed at highlighting Russia’s controversial anti-homosexuality laws. The six people held up a banner with the rainbow flag, the Olympic symbol and the words “To Russia with love” as they kissed on a Beijing street. Russia’s adoption in June last year of a law prohibiting the dissemination of information about homosexuality to minors has sparked protests from human rights groups and calls for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics, the country’s first post-Soviet Games. “We feel more positive today as it is Valentine’s Day, and we have the opportunity to relay the message that everybody has the right to love and the right to campaign,” activist Xiao Tie said.
SOUTH KOREA
Family reunions to go ahead
High-level talks between the rival Koreas ended yesterday with a rare agreement to go ahead as planned with a reunion for divided families, despite the North’s objections to overlapping South Korea-US military drills. The two sides also agreed to stop exchanging verbal insults and to continue their nascent dialogue at a convenient date, according to a joint statement read to reporters in Seoul by South Korea’s senior talks delegate Kim Kyou-hyun. The agreement, which was also carried on the North’s official KCNA news agency, suggested a significant concession by North Korea, which had wanted the South to postpone the Feb. 24 start of its annual military drills with the US until after the reunion. The South had refused, arguing that the two issues — one humanitarian and one military — should not be linked. The apparent concession and the commitment to continue what has been the highest-level official contact between the two countries since 2007 will fuel hopes that they might be entering a period of genuinely constructive engagement. “Agreement was reached today after North Korea accepted our position that the family reunion event is important ... as the first step to build trust,” Kim said.
UNITED STATES
Torture doctor convicted
A Delaware pediatrician known for his research on paranormal science and near-death experiences with children was convicted on Thursday of waterboarding the daughter of his longtime companion by holding her head under a faucet. Melvin Morse, 60, was charged with three felonies — two for the alleged waterboarding and one for alleged suffocation by hand, and convicted of one felony — waterboarding in the bathtub — and five misdemeanors. Jurors reduced the second waterboarding charge to a misdemeanor and acquitted Morse of the suffocation charge.
UNITED STATES
Gamer gets life for murder
In Pensacola, Florida, a fantasy game enthusiast was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for beating a former newspaper reporter to death with a hammer and burying his body in a concrete-covered pit in Georgia. William Cormier III was so desperate for money that he killed Sean Dugas in the fall of 2012 so he could steal his US$100,000 collection of fantasy role-playing cards for the game Magic: The Gathering, prosecutors said. Florida assistant state attorney Bridgette Jensen said during closing arguments that Cormier used profits from selling the cards to pay for the plastic storage container that became Dugas’ concrete-encased coffin.
UNITED STATES
Stamp may sell for US$20m
A tiny 1-cent postage stamp from a 19th-century British colony in South America has held the auction record for a single stamp three times. Now it is poised to become the world’s most valuable stamp again. Sotheby’s predicts the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta will sell for between US$10 million and US$20 million when offered in New York on June 17. An 1855 Swedish stamp that sold for US$2.3 million in 1996 currently holds the auction record for a single.
MEXICO
Butterfly protection urged
Dozens of scientists, artists, writers and environmentalists yesterday urged the leaders of Mexico, Canada and the US to devote part of their meeting next week to discussing ways to protect the monarch butterfly. A letter to the three leaders signed by more than 150 intellectuals said the monarch population has dropped to the lowest level since recordkeeping began in 1993. Experts blame the drop in numbers on extreme weather trends, a dramatic reduction of the butterflies’ habitat from illegal logging and genetically modified crops in the US displacing milkweed, which the species feeds on.
CHECHNYA
Giraffe offered asylum
To sentence one giraffe named Marius to death may be regarded as a misfortune; to sentence two would be a catastrophe, according to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. The president used his Instagram account to offer to take in the second Marius, which, it emerged on Wednesday, has been threatened with the same fate as his namesake. Kadyrov, who has been implicated in torture and human rights abuses, is a known animal admirer and has a huge personal zoo. “On humanitarian grounds, I am ready to take Marius in. We can guarantee him good living conditions and care for his health,” Kadyrov said. Just days after the euthanasia of a healthy young giraffe named Marius in Copenhagen sparked controversy around the world, Jyllands Park zoo, in western Denmark, announced that it was considering a similar fate for another giraffe, also named Marius.
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
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