CHINA
Firm to sue movie producers
A company that operates a scenic landscape area which features in the latest Transformers movie says it will sue the producers for breach of contract. It is the second Chinese company to make public a dispute with Paramount Pictures over Transformers: Age of Extinction, which heavily courts the Chinese audience with Chinese locations, actors and products, and is on track to become China’s biggest-grossing movier. Chongqing Wulong Karst Tourism Co Ltd said in a statement yesterday that the producers had failed to show its logo prominently in the movie as promised. As a result, it is not clear to viewers that the shots of the scenic spot are of Wulong, because they are interspersed with scenes from Hong Kong and other tourist spots are claiming the karst peaks are theirs, it added. It said it would file a suit at a court in Chongqing demanding unspecified damages against Paramount Pictures and Beijing-based 1905 Internet Technology Co, one of the movie’s Chinese partners. Wulong said it wanted measures taken to mitigate the damage, and compensation for direct and indirect economic losses. Last month, a Beijing property developer said it had filed a lawsuit alleging that Paramount and two of its Chinese associates had failed to deliver on pledges to hold the movie premiere at its hotel, and feature images of its property in trailers and posters. Soon after the developer and Paramount said they had smoothed out the dispute.
SOUTH KOREA
Dance troupe head jailed
A court sentenced the head of a traditional dance troupe to four years in prison yesterday after he was convicted of passing information to a North Korean spy. The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Jeon Shik-ryeol, 44, had violated the national security law which bans South Korean citizens from making unauthorized contact with North Koreans. Jeon, the head of the traditional dance company Chool, is a member of the left-wing Unified Progressive Party. Prosecutors said the dancer met a North Korean spy in Shanghai in March 2011 and sent an encoded oath of loyalty to Pyongyang a month later.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mom admits killing children
A South African woman wept in court on Monday as she admitted killing her three young disabled children in London. Tania Clarence, 42, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to the manslaughter by diminished responsibility of her three-year-old twin sons, Ben and Max, and four-year-old daughter Olivia, but she denied the more serious charge of murder sought by prosecutors and will face trial in February next year. She was remanded to a secure mental hospital. Her husband, Gary, was in court to watch the proceedings. At the time of the children’s deaths he was away in South Africa, the couple’s home country, with their eldest daughter. Clarence was detained after the three bodies were found at the family’s home in New Malden on April 22. All three suffered from type 2 spinal muscular atrophy.
SPAIN
Airport admits near miss
A passenger jet preparing to leave Barcelona’s El Prat airport taxied across a runway where another was about to land, forcing the arriving plane to abort its landing and climb sharply to avoid a possible disaster. Amateur video footage filmed on Saturday showed the Aerolineas Argentinas Airbus 340 crossing the runway just as the aircraft from Russian airline Utair was making its final approach. None of the passengers on either plane was hurt.
UNITED STATES
Violent cop movie sparks fury
Civil libertarians are calling on the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to conduct a full investigation into an officer who was videotaped repeatedly punching a woman he had pinned on the side of a Los Angeles freeway. The CHP said the woman was walking on Interstate 10 west of downtown Los Angeles, endangering herself and people in traffic, and the officer was trying to restrain her. The woman had begun walking off the freeway, but returned when the confrontation occurred. The video shows Marlene Pinnock, 51, struggling and trying to sit up, while the officer punches her in the face and head until an off-duty law enforcement officer appears and helps him handcuff her. American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California executive director Hector Villagra said officers can only use force when reasonably necessary to overcome force or danger posed by a subject. He called the video disturbing and said it raises serious questions about the officer’s actions. Attorney Caree Harper said she is preparing to file a lawsuit on Pinnock’s behalf in the coming days alleging federal civil rights violations. “The minute his fists repeatedly hit her face, the lawsuit virtually started writing itself,” Harper said. “Frankly, I think the officer was angry because he looked like an idiot chasing a grandmother and he wanted to make her pay.”
UNITED STATES
Phone returned from Japan
An Oklahoma farmer is celebrating the return of a cellphone lost in October last year and found nine months later in Japan after it took a trip in a grain shipment down the Mississippi River, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean. Kevin Whitney of Chickasha said he lost his smartphone when he bent down and the device fell out of his pocket into grain that was heading to a grain elevator. “I thought I’ll never see that phone again,” he told Oklahoma City TV broadcaster KFOR. The smartphone was found by mill workers in Kashima, Japan, in a shipment of about 2 million bushels of sorghum. They sent it back to a company in Louisiana that shipped the grain, which then tracked it down to its owner. “It’s crazy. I can’t believe it,” Whitney told KFOR, adding he was able to retrieve digital images he never thought he would see again. “What really shocked me about it all was what a small world it is. There are a lot of meaningful pictures on it, so we are real glad to get the phone back.”
UNITED STATES
Baby abandoned on subway
New York City police say they are searching for a woman who abandoned a baby at a Manhattan subway station. According to WINS Radio, it happened at about noon on Monday. Police say the woman pushed the baby’s stroller onto the platform when the northbound No. 1 train arrived at the Columbus Circle station. Then she got back onto the train. Authorities say the baby is six or seven months old.
HONDURAS
Search for miners suspended
The government says it is suspending the search for eight miners trapped for six days in a collapsed gold mine in the south of the country. Geologist Anibal Godoy, the head of the search, on Monday told reporters that “the chance that the miners are alive is close to nothing.” Godoy said the search was being suspended in order to not risk any more lives. Three miners were rescued from the unregulated San Juan Arriba mine, which is located in a mountainous municipality known as El Corpus, about 100km south of the capital, Tegucigalpa.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the