CHINA
Arrests made in arson case
Police have detained seven suspects, including a local official and a property developer, in connection with the death of a villager in a land grab case in eastern China, state-backed media reported yesterday. Seizures of land across the country, a major cause of unrest, have been fueled by soaring prices and the government’s urban expansion drive, resulting in often violent clashes between officials and villagers. The 63-year-old villager from Shandong Province was camped out near his farm to protect it from being seized, media reported. He was killed when his tent was set on fire last week. Four arsonists were hired by a property developer and a village official, Legal Daily reported. The seventh person detained was acting as a middleman.
CHINA
Official reported dead in fall
A top official at the government information department died yesterday after a fall, Chinese Communist Party media reported. Li Wufeng (李伍峰), deputy director of the State Council Information Office “fell to death,” the People’s Daily newspaper reported on its English-language Twitter feed. “Cause is unknown,” it added, without elaborating. Chinese news outlet Caixin also reported the death on its Web site, although the story was later deleted. Li, 56, was appointed to the post in June last year, state media reported at the time, and was previously deputy head of the State Internet Information Office. Little other information on Li, other than basic biographical facts, was immediately available and he did not appear to be a target of any known investigations.
CHINA
US first lady goes Tibetan
US first lady Michelle Obama has ended her week-long trip to China with a Tibetan theme, having lunch in a Tibetan restaurant and meeting students who presented her with a Tibetan silk scarf and tapping Tibetan prayer wheels. Her staff said the restaurant choice yesterday in Chengdu City in southwest Sichuan Province was in accordance with her interest in the rights of minorities in the nation. Yesterday Obama, her mother and daughters visited pandas at the Chengdu Panda Base. She was to return to the US later yesterday.
AUSTRALIA
‘Insult’ laws to be repealed
Authorities moved on Tuesday to water down its race discrimination laws, saying hurt feelings were inevitable during robust debate and the government would not legislate to protect them. Attorney-General George Brandis said the government planned to repeal a section of the Racial Discrimination Act that makes it illegal to “offend, insult or humiliate another” because of their race. “Laws which are designed to prohibit racial vilification should not be used as a vehicle to attack legitimate freedoms of speech,” he said. Brandis said a new clause would be inserted into the law to ban racial vilification, defined as inciting hatred against racial groups, rather than simply offending them. The change honors an election promise made in the wake of a court case when a conservative newspaper columnist criticized “white Aborigines” who claimed grants and scholarships meant for indigenous Australians. The columnist, Andrew Bolt, was found guilty of racial discrimination when a group of the people targeted in his article took him to court saying they had been offended and insulted. Brandis said it was impossible to discuss difficult issues without occasionally causing offense to those who held a different view.
UNITED STATES
Boozy bodyguards sent home
Three members of the Secret Service detail that protects President Barack Obama were sent home from Amsterdam for disciplinary reasons, a Secret Service spokesman confirmed on Tuesday. The spokesman, Brian Leary, declined to provide further details. The agents were disciplined after going out for a night of drinking, the Washington Post reported. One of the agents was found drunk and passed out in a hotel hallway a day before the president arrived in Europe, said the Post, which first reported the incident, citing three people familiar with it. None of the agents were supervisors, a Secret Service source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general released in December last year urged tougher management and disciplinary standards and recommended that the service monitor and address excessive alcohol consumption and personal conduct within its workforce.
UNITED KINGDOM
Rizzo wins chef award
Brazilian chef Helena Rizzo, of the Mani restaurant in Sao Paulo, was on Tuesday named Veuve Clicquot’s World’s Best Female Chef. Rizzo, who last year became the first winner of Veuve Clicquot’s Latin America’s Best Female Chef, is to receive the award at a ceremony in London next month. She takes the award from Italian Nadia Santini, who cooks at the three-Michelin-starred Dal Pecatore in Canneto sull’Oglio, Lombardy. Rizzo apprenticed at Spain’s El Celler de Can Roca, currently rated as the world’s best restaurant. She opened Mani with her husband, chef Daniel Redondo, in 2006. Their speciality is an interpretation of classic Brazilian Maniocas baked and served with a foam tucupi sauce, coconut milk and oil with white truffle.
FRANCE
Guillotine up for auction
A 19th-century guillotine in perfect working order goes up for auction today and is expected to fetch up to 60,000 euros (US$82,000), the auctioneers said. The wood, iron, steel and brass guillotine, synonymous with the 1789 French Revolution, was used to behead people in the second half of the 19th century. It is to be sold in Nantes. It is expected to fetch between 50,000 euros and 60,000 euros auctioneer Francois-Xavier Duflos said. Duflos said the guillotine was used by the army, but he did not elaborate. The guillotine has been in private hands for more than a century and the current owner had it passed down to him from his grandfather, who apparently bought it in the early 20th century. The blade of the guillotine bears the inscription “Armees de la Republique,” a revolutionary force created to defend France from its neighbors after the 1789 French Revolution.
MEXICO
Children freed from pimps
Prosecutors say they have freed two children held by pimps who used their hold over the children to force their mothers into prostitution in the US. The raid announced on Tuesday appears to confirm one of the most chilling allegations about the prostitution trade operated by organized gangs in the center of the country: that some women are forced into sex for hire because they fear their children will be harmed if they attempt escape. The raid occurred last week in the town of Tenancingo. The Attorney General’s Office said the children’s mothers had been forced to prostitute themselves in Texas and New York. An activist familiar with the case said they were girls aged six and nine.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not