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.
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
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
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