UNITED STATES
Trafficking sanctions waived
President Barack Obama has decided not to impose sanctions against Malaysia and Thailand for failing to meet minimum standards in combating human trafficking. In June, the two Southeast Asian nations were downgraded in the Department of State’s annual assessment of how governments around the world have performed in fighting the flesh trade and other forms of exploitative labor. The president can block various types of aid for governments that are blacklisted. However, Washington often chooses not to, based on its national security interests.
SWEDEN
Rape ruling overturned
A man who had sex with a woman while he was asleep was acquitted of rape because he suffers from “sexsomnia,” according to a court ruling obtained on Thursday. The 26-year-old man did not have “the intention” to have sex, the Sundsvall appeal court said, as it overruled the previous two-year-prison sentence. The argument that the defendant “was in a state of sleepiness, unconscious of what was happening, does not seem absurd,” the court said in its judgement, issued on Sept. 8. The decision was mainly motivated by the intervention of a doctor specializing in sleep disorders who said that the defendant could suffer from sexsomnia, a state in which a person can have sex while asleep.
INDONESIA
US man confesses to murder
Police say a US man has confessed that he killed his girlfriend’s mother in a Bali hotel and the girlfriend has acknowledged helping him stuff the body into a suitcase.Heather Mack, 19, and her boyfriend Tommy Schaefer, 21, both from Chicago, were arrested in Bali on Aug. 13, a day after the body of Sheila von Wiese-Mack was found in a suitcase inside the trunk of a taxi at the St Regis Bali Resort. Police chief Colonel Djoko Heru Utomo said yesterday that Schaefer confessed during an interrogation on Monday and that Mack acknowledged her role in separate questioning later this week.
CHINA
Liu Tienan trial to begin
A court will next week try a former deputy head of the nation’s top planning agency on corruption charges, state media said yesterday, after allegations against him were posted online and as the government pursues a high-profile campaign to root out graft. Liu Tienan (劉鐵男) was sacked in May last year. Luo Changping (羅昌平), deputy editor-in-chief of the investigative magazine Caijing, posted accusations online in late 2012 that Liu was involved in a number of illegal activities. Liu’s trial will open on Wednesday in Langfang in the northern province of Hebei, close to Beijing, the China News Service said. Liu is accused of abusing his government positions and taking bribes, the state prosecutor said in June.
PHILIPPINES
Military withdraws troops
The military says the bulk of peacekeepers have pulled out two weeks early from the UN mission in the Golan Heights due to escalating fighting in the region. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ramon Zagala said 244 troops will arrive in Manila on a UN-chartered plane on Friday. A smaller batch of 85 soldiers will arrive on Sunday from the Golan Heights, ending a five-year peacekeeping role that has been marred by Syrian rebel kidnappings and attacks. Zagala said the long-planned withdrawal is not connected with differences between security officials and the UN peacekeeping force commander over a hostage crisis involving the troops in the area.
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
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
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