CHINA
Deaths tied to coffin ban
Six elderly people reportedly committed suicide to ensure they died before new regulations banning coffin burials come into force, the Beijing News reported yesterday. Officials in Anqing, Anhui Province, ordered that all locals who die after Sunday should be cremated, the newspaper reported. It said officials began to forcibly confiscate coffins this month. Zheng Shifang, 83, killed herself after officials sawed her coffin in two in front of her, while a 91-year-old woman hanged herself on May 5 after learning of the regulations, the report said.
AUSTRALIA
Apple hack reported
Multiple users on Apple’s online support forum and Twitter have reported an unusual smartphone and tablet hack in which cyberattackers were said to have locked users’ smartphones and demanded payment in return for unlocking them. The alleged cyberattackers, first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, appeared to use Apple’s “Find My Phone” feature to lock the devices’ screens and send a message demanding that money be sent to a PayPal account. An Apple spokeswoman in Sydney said by telephone that the company did not have any details on how widespread the incident was.
SINGAPORE
Xenophobia condemned
Guest workers and expatriates are increasingly the target of “xenophobic” attacks on social media, leading activist groups said yesterday. There is evidence of the “widespread use of racist, aggressive and militarized rhetoric” against foreigners on social networks, the 12 groups said in a news release. The statement warned of a worrying trend “blaming foreigners for social ills” such as overcrowding and unemployment. The government needs to change the policies that have caused marginalization and inequality, they said.
AUSTRALIA
Cheeky photo published
The Sydney Daily Telegraph yesterday published a picture showing the Duchess of Cambridge’s bare bottom. The image was taken when Prince William and his wife, Kate, visited the country last month. It shows her blue and white dress lifted by a gust of wind when the couple got out of a helicopter in the Blue Mountains, 80km west of Sydney. The German tabloid Bild published it on Tuesday, but British newspapers reportedly refused to run it out of respect to the royals. Diane Morel, a Blue Mountains local, took the photo.
JAPAN
Warrant issued in ‘doll’ case
Police have obtained an arrest warrant for a woman for allegedly using the passport of a nurse whose body was posted in a box marked “doll,” an official said yesterday. The suspect, a 29-year-old Japanese-Brazilian, turned herself in to the Japanese consulate in Shanghai and was detained by local police for suspected immigration offences, local reports said. The mutilated body of Rika Okada, 29, was found in a storage lock-up in Tokyo after being posted from Osaka.
INDIA
Monk flees Tibet
A Tibetan monk who worked on a 2008 documentary film critical of China’s rule in the Himalayan region said he escaped Chinese police custody in 2012 and crossed the border last week after hiding out for 20 months. Golog Jigme, 44, who alleges he was beaten severely during detention, said he was held in the Labrang monastery area in Gansu Province before escaping.
SPAIN
Migrants storm Spanish city
About 400 migrants stormed across a towering, triple-layer border fence from Morocco into the tiny Spanish territory of Melilla yesterday, one of the biggest crossings in nearly a decade, an official said. More than 1,000 sub-Saharans joined in the dawn assault on Melilla. About 400 of them managed to breach the three layers of 7m high border fence, the Melilla City President Juan Jose Imbroda told Spanish public radio station RNE. “The Guardia civil police deployed in large numbers, but it was hard to stop it,” he added. Melilla, which lies on the northern coast of Morocco, is enclosed by an 11km long border fence running in a semi-circle up to the Mediterranean.
SUDAN
Jailed woman gives birth
A Christian woman, sentenced to hang for apostasy in a case that has sparked an international outcry, has given birth in jail, her husband said on Tuesday. Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, 27, already has a 20-month-old son, who is also incarcerated with her. A Khartoum-area court sentenced her to 100 lashes and death on May 15. Born to a Muslim father, but raised by her Christian mother, she was convicted under Islamic Shariah law that has been in force in the country since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.
FRANCE
Oldest false tooth found
An iron tooth implant fitted about 2,300 years ago has been found in the grave of a young woman. Archeologists believe it may have been fitted to beautify her corpse, as it would have been too excruciating to have had it hammered into the living jaw. The corroded piece of metal is the same size and shape as the other incisors from her upper jaw — which did not survive as the timber tomb collapsed and crushed her skull. The implant, the oldest of its kind discovered in western Europe, is 400 years older than one from another grave found in the 1990s in Essonne, France.
RUSSIA
Protesters storm presidency
Opposition protesters stormed the presidency in Abkhazia overnight in what the leader of the Georgian breakaway state called a coup attempt, Russian news agencies said yesterday. “This is an armed coup attempt,” Abkhaz President Alexander Ankvab was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. Abkhazia is recognized only by Russia. Its capital, Sokhumi, is on the Black Sea coast. Interfax said opposition groups took over the presidency overnight following a protest by about 1,000 people, forcing Ankvab to flee. One of the leaders of the statelet’s opposition, Raul Khadjimba, told the crowd that a coordination council “was taking over the leadership of the republic.” “I haven’t left, I am still in Abkhazia,” Ankvab said in a televised address quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency.
BRAZIL
Protesters fire arrows at cops
Police fired tear gas on Tuesday to break up a protest by bow-and-arrow-wielding indigenous chiefs who joined forces with anti-FIFA World Cup demonstrators to condemn the money spent on the tournament. Wearing traditional clothing, about 500 chiefs mainly from the Amazon basin joined another 500 protesters rallying for various social causes in Brasilia’s government square and began marching toward the capital’s World Cup stadium. As mounted police moved to block the march, some of the demonstrators rushed their horses and fired arrows. A policeman was hit in the leg by an arrow.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema