CHINA
Facebook CEO gives talk
China might ban Facebook, but not its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and he entertained an audience of students with a 30-minute chat in his recently learned Mandarin Chinese at a prestigious Beijing university. There was no explicit discussion of the ban or any Facebook effort to enter the China market during Wednesday’s question-and-answer session at Tsinghua University. However, Zuckerberg said during his talk that the social media giant already helps some Chinese companies gain customers abroad. He cited computer maker Lenovo’s advertisements on Facebook in India. Zuckerberg married Chinese-American Priscilla Chan in 2012 and said he was learning Chinese. His pronunciation was far from fluent, but he maintained the conversation for a half hour and the students responded with warm cheers for his effor and laughter at his humor.
CHINA
Troops deployed over drone
China deployed more than 1,200 troops and scrambled fighter jets in response to an unauthorized flight near Beijing airport by what turned out to be a mapping drone, a media report said yesterday. Three men are being prosecuted over the incident, the China Daily said. It cited prosecutors as saying that 1,226 military personnel, 123 military vehicles, 26 radar technicians, two fighter jets and two helicopters were sent into action after the aircraft was spotted on radar screens. Police arrested two men as they flew the drone and a third confessed later, according to the paper, which is published by the government. All three men worked for an aviation technology company, the report said, and the 2.3m-long drone was intended to be used for survey and mapping purposes.
RUSSIA
Airport employees detained
Authorities have detained four Moscow airport employees over a plane crash that killed the head of French oil giant Total, whose private jet hit a snowplow on takeoff, investigators said yesterday. Those detained include the air traffic controller in charge of directing the doomed plane at Vnukovo airport, her supervisor, the head of air traffic controllers and the chief of runway cleaning, Russia’s investigative committee said in a statement. “The investigation suggests that these people did not respect the norms of flight security and ground operations, which led to the tragedy,” the statement said. “They have been detained as suspects.” Longtime Total boss Christophe de Margerie was killed along with the crew of his private jet in Monday night’s accident.
ZIMBABWE
Students fight kissing ban
The Zimbabwe students’ union yesterday made war not love over a new code of conduct banning students from kissing on campus at the country’s top university. In a circular displayed at halls of residence, authorities at the University of Zimbabwe said students “caught in any intimate position such as kissing or having sex in public places” would be punished. The university also barred resident students from bringing members of the opposite sex to their hostels and “loitering in dark places outside the sports pavilion or lecture venues.” Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASSU) president Gilbert Mutubuki said students would resist the rules introduced two weeks ago. “We are against these rules, which we view as archaic, repressive and evil,” Mutubuki said. “These rules reduce the university to a primary school. The authorities need to be reminded that this is an institute for adults, who are mature.” He said the rules, which also bar students from accommodating non-resident colleagues, were meant to curtail students’ right to associate.
MACEDONIA
Grave guard stole teeth
The country may have found its ultimate gold digger. Police say a 52-year-old guard at an Orthodox Christian cemetery was detained after alleged opening graves to prize gold teeth and dentures and reselling them. The suspect identified only by his initials, J.K., was taken in for questioning in Tetovo after police searched him outside a shopping mall and found him carrying 12 pairs of dentures and four gold tooth caps, believed to be destined for sale in Serbia. Tetovo police spokesman Marijan Josifovski on Wednesday said the man has been charged with desecrating graves, an offense that carries a jail sentence of up to one year.
SWITZERLAND
Firm sorry for Hitler labels
Swiss retailer Migros apologized on Wednesday for putting cream capsules with the faces of Hitler and Mussolini on them in cafes in the Alpine country. Migros said it “offered its apologies for this unforgivable incident” and that it was in the process of withdrawing them from cafes. Labels from coffee cream capsules have a cult following in Switzerland, with manufacturers feeding the passion by releasing regular new editions that are sometimes available to collectors before they reach cafes. The designs were developed by Karo, a firm which specializes in cream capsules, and were part of a 55-label series based on vintage cigar bands. Among them were cigar bands from the pre-World War II era that showed the faces of Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler and his Italian fascist counterpart, Benito Mussolini.
UNITED STATES
Latest fence-jumper held
A 23-year-old Maryland man was in custody early yesterday after he reportedly climbed over the White House fence and was swiftly apprehended on the North Lawn by uniformed US Secret Service agents and their dogs. The incident that began on Wednesday came about a month after a previous White House fence-jumper carrying a knife sprinted across the same lawn, past armed uniformed agents and entered the mansion before he was detained in the ceremonial East Room. Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said a man he identified as Dominic Adesanya of Bel Air, Maryland, climbed the north fence line at about 7:16pm and was taken into custody immediately by uniformed agents and K9 teams. Obama was at the White House at the time of Wednesday’s incident. Adesanya was unarmed when he was arrested, Leary said. Charges were pending. Two dogs were taken to a veterinarian for injuries sustained during the incident, Leary added.
UNITED STATES
Online harassment surveyed
A new study confirms what many Internet users know all too well: Harassment is a common part of online life. The report by the Pew Research Center found that nearly three-quarters of US adults who use the Internet have witnessed online harassment. Forty percent have experienced online harassment. The types of behavior that Pew asked about range from name-calling to physical threats, sexual harassment and stalking. Half of those who were harassed said they did not know the person who had most recently attacked them. Young adults aged 18 to 29 were the most likely age group to see and undergo online harassment. The survey was conducted between May 30 and June 30 among 3,217 respondents.
CANADA
Baby corpses lead to arrest
A woman was charged on Wednesday after police discovered six decomposing baby corpses in a rented storage unit in Winnipeg, police said. Andrea Giesbrecht, 40, was arrested and charged with concealing the bodies of children and breaching probation. Giesbrecht, who also goes by the name Andrea Naworynski was “detained in custody,” police said. Authorities initially thought there were four bodies in the storage unit, but said on Wednesday that six rotting bodies were found. “Autopsies are ongoing,” Winnipeg police said. It was not clear how the babies died or how old they were. Police said on Tuesday they were “speaking with a number of individuals” in connection with the gruesome discovery. Local media outlets said an employee at the storage facility detected the bodies on Monday afternoon, after tracing a foul smell emanating from the tiny corpses.
PERU
Town holds ‘coin-toss runoff’
The tiny town of Paruro determined its new mayor in a strange way — a coin toss — after the two candidates reached a tie at the ballot box earlier this month, officials said on Wednesday. Wilbert Medina and Jose Cornejo Carpio each earned exactly 236 votes in the Oct. 5 balloting in the southeastern town with a population of less than 4,000 people. So the Cusco area special electoral board jumped in and applied existing legislation that allows for a coin toss to break any such odds-defying tie. Medina won the toss and so became Paruro’s lucky leader.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not