JAPAN
Cabinet reshuffle next month
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he plans to revamp his Cabinet early next month for the first time since taking office, on the back of falling approval ratings. “I want to reshuffle the Cabinet and review the line-up of party executives in the first week of September,” he told Japanese reporters accompanying him on a tour of Latin America on Thursday. Abe said he would try to keep women in the Cabinet and key party posts, as he looks to boost female workforce participation, according to Japanese media reports from Santiago, Chile, the fourth leg of his five-nation tour. Abe declined to say if he would replace ministers in key posts.
THAILAND
Musician jailed over insult
A musician has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for royal defamation, a court official said yesterday, in the latest conviction under a controversial lese majeste law. The 28-year-old was found guilty of posting insulting messages about the monarchy on Facebook between 2010 and 2011, a court official from the northeastern province of Ubon Ratchathani said, without giving further details. The court sentenced the musician to three years each for nine counts of lese majeste and four months each for 12 counts of violating the computer crime act. However, after admitting to all charges his sentence was reduced to 15 years in jail.
JAPAN
Police hide 81,000 crimes
Osaka police have admitted they did not report more than 81,000 offenses over a period of several years in a desperate bid to clean up the region’s woeful reputation for street crime. The revelation came earlier this week when embarrassed authorities said they had kept the data out of national crime statistics from 2008 to 2012. The deception, which amounted to nearly 10 percent of all crimes in the area during that period, meant that Tokyo appeared to have the worst national crime figures. The vast majority of covered-up crimes were for theft — including tens of thousands of stolen vehicle and bicycle cases — but hundreds of more serious offenses such as muggings and even murder may have been omitted from official crime data, the Asahi newspaper reported.
SOUTH AFRICA
Giraffe’s head hits overpass
Officials said they plan to file charges after the death of a giraffe whose head struck a highway overpass while it was being transported in a truck. Animal welfare officer Rick Allan yesterday said that the accident on a highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg was very unsettling because it could easily have been avoided. He said charges were likely to be filed against those responsible under animal protection laws. Startled motorists took photographs of the truck before the accident on Thursday. It was carrying two giraffes whose long necks were visible above the sides of the vehicle. The surviving giraffe was taken to a wildlife clinic.
UNITED STATES
Cantor resigning early
Representative Eric Cantor — who lost his re-election bid to a Tea Party-backed opponent in June — told a Virginia newspaper that he will resign his seat in the House of Representatives months earlier than expected. Cantor’s announcement came hours after he stepped down as House majority leader on Thursday. He had previously said he would serve his full term, which would have ended in January. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported early yesterday that Cantor will step down on Aug. 18. He said he had asked Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to call a special election for his district to coincide with the Nov. 4 general election, which would allow his successor to take office immediately.
UNITED STATES
Envoy to Russia confirmed
The Senate approved President Barack Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Moscow on Thursday, a quick confirmation amid a long backlog of would-be envoys awaiting a vote. John Tefft, a career diplomat specializing in Eastern Europe, fills a post that has been vacant since February. The approval came only weeks after his nomination, although several other ambassadorial nominations remain in limbo on Capitol Hill.
UNITED STATES
Sudanese woman arrives
A Sudanese Christian woman sentenced to death for renouncing Islam, but acquitted after international pressure on Sudan, arrived in Philadelphia on Thursday with her family. Meriam Ibrahim Tehya Ishag was welcomed by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who presented her with a model of the Liberty Bell, media reports said. The 26-year-old, her two children and her husband, Daniel Wani, later continued on to New Hampshire, where Wani has family.
UNITED STATES
Rapid evolution saved birds
A branch of large, lumbering dinosaurs shrank over just 50 million years of evolution to become today’s modern birds, a study showed on Thursday. “Birds out-shrank and out-evolved their dinosaurian ancestors, surviving where their larger, less evolvable relatives could not,” said lead author Michael Lee, a professor at the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs dubbed theropods — a category that included Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor — were the only branch of dinosaurs to keep getting smaller and smaller, researchers said. “Being smaller and lighter in the land of giants, with rapidly evolving anatomical adaptations, provided these bird ancestors with new ecological opportunities, such as the ability to climb trees, glide and fly,” Lee said. “Ultimately, this evolutionary flexibility helped birds survive the deadly meteorite impact which killed off all their dinosaurian cousins.”
GERMANY
Phone hunt causes flood
A teenager who lost his cellphone in a pond tried to get it back by draining the water and pumping it into a nearby toilet, but caused major damage when the water flooded the tank and sent the waste spewing, the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper reported. “I thought two pumps would drain enough of the water from the pond so I could find my cellphone,” the 16-year-old from Klein Hesepe said. “I knew the phone was probably dead, but wanted to get the data card back with the numbers, pictures and videos of my friends.” The pond contained 1.8 million liters of water, while the toilet had a 1,000-liter tank. “It almost worked,” the teen said.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing