CHINA
Gang boss sentenced
A former mining tycoon was sentenced to death yesterday for leading a crime gang that killed rivals, a state news agency reported, in a case that revealed ties between organized crime and politicians. Liu Han (劉漢) is former chairman of energy conglomerate Sichuan Hanlong Group, which owns stakes in Australian and US mines. He disappeared in March last year before police announced he had been detained.
NEPAL
Avalanche takes climbers
Officials said an avalanche has swept away three climbers and they are presumed dead on the slopes of Mount Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-tallest peak. Police official Meghraj Kadel said rescuers found no trace of an Indian climber and her two Nepalese Sherpa guides after they were hit by the avalanche at 7,300m on Wednesday. The Indian was identified as 35-year-old Chanda Gayen and her guides as Temba and Dawa Wanju. They scaled Kanchenjunga on Sunday and were attempting to climb Yalung Kang, a sister peak.
CHINA
Minister slams TV show
The nation lashed out on Thursday at a Spanish TV station which showed an anti-Chinese sign in the background of a comedy show aiming to mock racism. Spanish channel Telecinco’s Aida program last weekend featured a scene in which a bar owner adds “and no Chinese either” to a sign barring dogs from his establishment. The show’s creator, Mauricio Colmenero, said in a statement that the bar owner character was a caricature of a “racist, chauvinist and fascist man who embodies everything we do not want in our society.” The joke appeared to be lost on Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊), who called the program an insult to his nation. “The Spanish TV station repeatedly broadcast TV programs that insult Chinese and played to the gallery by slandering Chinese,” he told a regular press briefing in Beijing. “We demand that the TV station face up to its mistakes, take seriously the calls for justice from the public, and correct its mistakes.”
RUSSIA
Lion rampages on train
A woman who smuggled a 50kg lion cub onto a sleeper train claiming it was a domestic cat was being questioned on Thursday, police said. The big cat was exposed after it began behaving aggressively on a passenger train heading for the city of Yekaterinburg 1,400km east of Moscow, police said. “The lion cub had first been kept in a cage, but then the woman accompanying it for some reason let the animal out,” a police spokesman told the Interfax news agency. “When the animal ... started behaving wildly, the woman couldn’t control it. She shut it in her sleeper car and asked ... for help.” The woman faced questioning on “how she carried a 50kg, nine-month-old lion registered in travel documents as ... a domestic cat,” police said. Police said they would also question rail staff who “allowed cargo on board that was so dangerous.”
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the