AUSTRALIA
Foreign student slain
A Frenchwoman has become the fourth foreign student to be murdered in Brisbane in almost as many months, police said yesterday. The battered and naked body of a 21-year-old woman was found in a park near her apartment after what police called “a brutal attack” in the early hours of Friday last week. “We believe the cause of death is a brain injury from blunt trauma. It’s a particularly aggressive attack,” Detective Inspector Rod Kemp said. The killing follows the stabbing death of Singaporean Meena Narayanan last week. There is no suggestion any of the deaths are linked, but Kemp said the spate of killings was a real worry.
CHINA
Actor’s apology sets record
Film and TV star Wen Zhang’s (文章) apology to his actress wife following rumors of his infidelity has set a record for comments and retweets on the Sino Weibo microblogging site. Wen posted a statement early Monday that his wife, Ma Yili (馬伊琍), “and the children could have had a warm and nice life, but everything was destroyed by me.” By yesterday, his post had been forwarded more than 1.2 million times and received nearly 1.9 million comments. The topic trended above the missing Malaysian plane. Sina Weibo said on its site on Monday evening that the vast majority of people discussing Wen’s post were educated women and girls aged 24 and under.
NORTH KOREA
New logo looks familiar
The choice of a globe as the emblem for the nation’s space agency expresses the country’s ideal of peaceful exploration, the Korean Central News Agency said. The blue rings represent satellites and the constellation of stars shows the desire to “glorify Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jong-il’s Korea as a space power,” it said. However, the new logo looks a lot like NASA’s, right down to the blue globe, lettering and swooshed ring. The agency said the logo was released to mark the first anniversary of the National Aerospace Development Administration. The name is shortened on the emblem to NADA, the Spanish word for “nothing,” arguably also an unfortunate coincidence given that this seems to be precisely what the country’s only successfully launched satellite is transmitting to Earth, leading foreign scientists to assume it has malfunctioned.
THAILAND
PM faces new court case
The Constitutional Court yesterday accepted a new case against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The case has been brought by a group of 27 senators who claim that her removal of National Security Chief Thawil Pliensree in 2011 violated the constitution. The court also threw out a petition by the minister of labor asking it to rule that the anti-government protests aimed at forcing the government out violated the constitution.
THAILAND
Scrap proves deadly
Police say workers at a scrap shop in Bangkok yesterday accidentally detonated a large bomb believed to have been dropped during World War II, killing at least seven people and injuring 19. Bomb squad chief Kamthorn Auicharoen says construction workers found the bomb buried at a building site and sold it to the scrap shop in northern Lad Plakao neighborhood. He said workers at the shop were using a blowtorch to take the bomb apart when it exploded. The massive blast ripped apart the scrap shop and damaged nearby houses.
UNITED STATES
Man chainsaws own neck
A tree trimmer is recovering after he was rushed to a hospital with a chain saw blade embedded in his neck. James Valentine, 21, was in a tree on Monday afternoon when he was struck in the neck by the chain saw. Another worker helped him down, and his coworkers left the saw in place to try to limit the bleeding. Valentine had emergency surgery. Doctors say the saw missed major arteries and, instead, cut into muscle.
KENYA
Radical cleric assassinated
Armed police patrolled the streets of Mombasa yesterday as radical Muslim cleric Abubaker Shariff Ahmed was buried as martyr after being assassinated overnight. However, the city was reportedly calm in the morning, with Ahmed’s mosque broadcasting appeals for restraint among the prominent cleric’s supporters. Ahmed was a vocal supporter of late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and was on UN sanctions lists accused of being a “leading facilitator and recruiter of young Kenyan Muslims for violent militant activity in Somalia,” and of having “strong ties” with Somalian militants al-Shabaab. He described last year’s attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi as “100 percent justified.”
KENYA
Gang rapists finally charged
A group of men accused of ferociously gang raping a schoolgirl and originally punished by being made to cut grass around a police station are to be formally charged, the public prosecutor said on Tuesday. Worldwide outrage over the punishment last year prompted more than 1.6 million people to sign a petition demanding justice, leading the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution to order a probe into the case. After reviewing the evidence, the office said in a statement on Tuesday it “directed that the suspects be charged with gang rape.” The 16-year-old victim, known only as Liz, was reportedly attacked, beaten and raped by six men in June last year. The gang dumped her, bleeding and unconscious, in a sewage ditch. She suffered a broken back from either the beating or from being hurled into the pit, as well as serious internal injuries from the rape.
RUSSIA
Putin’s divorce finalized
The Kremlin confirmed yesterday that President Vladimir Putin has finalized the divorce from his wife of 30 years following the couple’s sudden split last summer. Putin’s official biography, which as recently as Sunday described him as: “Married. Wife Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Putina,” now states that he has two daughters, with no mention of a first lady. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to the state-owned Itar-TASS news agency that “the divorce has been completed.”
SWEDEN
‘Anti-racist militant’ jailed
A 60-year-old woman was sentenced to two months in jail on Tuesday for attacking the leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party with a cake and driving without a license. “She abused [party chairman] Jimmie Aakesson by pushing a cake into his face,” a Stockholm court wrote in the sentence. Irene Matkowitzc, who admitted the crime, was ordered to pay 5,000 kronor (US$775) in damages to Aakesson and cover his 300 kronor dry cleaning bill. Matkowitzc attacked Aakesson at a book signing in the capital in November last year, when she shoved a Swedish cream cake she had concealed in her jacket in his face, shouting: “Fascist bastard.” Matkowitzc defended her attack as the work of a militant anti-racist opposing “a symbol of neo-fascism.”
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
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