CHINA
Police crash activist dinner
Police on Tuesday night broke up a dinner party attended by activists in Hangzhou and detained a dozen people, an activist who attended the dinner said. Activist and blogger Wang Wusi (王五 四) said he and another 10 people were released after spending about two hours in custody. He said police held Wen Kejian (溫克堅) until yesterday morning and then released him without his cellphone or computer. Wen is a signatory of Charter 08, a document calling for democracy and the end of one-party rule. Wang yesterday said the activists had been warned by police that they were not allowed to meet for the dinner they organized in response to the recent detentions of other activists. “We just wanted to get together and discuss this because we all feel the pressure growing,” Wang said.
CHINA
Study looks at student suicide
The high-pressure, exam-driven national education system is responsible for the vast majority of schoolchildren suicides, state media said yesterday, citing the 2014 Annual Report on China’s Education. A Ministry of Health journal said that about 500 primary and middle-school students kill themselves every year. A study of 79 such suicides last year found that almost 93 percent happened after arguments between the pupils and their teachers, or after the students experienced heavy pressure at school. Most killed themselves because “they could not bear the heavy pressure of the test-oriented education system,” the state-run China Daily quoted the findings as saying. The study follows a spate of suicides, including a 13-year-old boy in Jiangsu Province who hung himself this month after failing to finish his homework, the China Daily said.
PNG
Boy’s limbs found in croc
The limbs of an 11-year-old boy have been found inside a huge crocodile and his head discovered nearby where he was attacked in Siloura River in Gulf Province, a report said yesterday. The 4m croc grabbed Melas Mero as he was fishing with his parents last week, police commander Lincoln Gerari told the National newspaper. “The crocodile swept the boy with its tail and then attacked the defenseless child,” Gerari said. He added that police found two hands, two legs and a hipbone inside the crocodile after they tracked it down and killed it.
SOUTH KOREA
Toilet door taken for drone
The Ministry of Defense yesterday said that a suspected crashed drone was a false alarm, after it turned out to be the door of a portable toilet. An investigation team responded to a passer-by’s report of what he thought was the wreckage of a drone in a fenced-off military area in southern Seoul, only to find that the object was the broken door of a portable toilet, a ministry spokesman said. The door was a similar sky-blue color to three drones recovered in the past two months.
PAKISTAN
Seminary teacher held for rape
Police have arrested a seminary teacher and two of his friends on charges of gang raping a college girl in Mansehra, an official said yesterday. The incident took place on Monday when the seminary instructor and two companions lured the victim and a friend on the pretext of dropping them off home, then raped the girl in a moving car, police officer Zulfiqar Jadon said. The teacher confessed, but then retracted his statement, saying the two girls joined him and his friends on an outing. The case is unusual since rapes are rarely prosecuted.
‘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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in