UNITED STATES
Slain teen’s parents to sue
Lawyers for the parents of Michael Brown, an unarmed, black 18-year-old who was fatally shot last year by a white police officer in a St Louis, Missouri, suburb, said on Wednesday night that they planned to file a civil lawsuit against the city of Ferguson. Attorneys for the family said the lawsuit would name former police officer Darren Wilson, who shot Brown. A St Louis County grand jury and the Department of Justice declined to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November last year, but the department last month released a scathing report citing racial bias and profiling in the Ferguson Police Department and a profit-driven municipal court system that frequently targets black residents. Several city officials resigned following the review, including the city manager, police chief and municipal judge.
MEXICO
Radioactive loot recovered
Authorities say they have recovered hazardous radioactive material reportedly stolen last week from the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco. The Ministry of the Interior says the material, iridium-192, used for industrial radiography, was found sealed in its container on a pedestrian walkway in Cardenas, the same town where it was stolen. The ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the container was not “opened or manipulated” and posed no threat. Unknown people on Thursday last week allegedly stole a truck containing the material.
UNITED STATES
Astronaut tweets quiz
Astronaut Scott Kelly has launched a geography quiz on Twitter and is to post a picture from the International Space Station each week so fans can guess his location. Kelly is spending a year in orbit, along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, in an experiment to see how people withstand long periods in space. Kelly began the contest on Earth Day on Wednesday from the Twitter handle @StationCDRKelly. “The first person to correctly identify the place depicted in his photos will win a copy of the picture signed by Kelly after he returns to Earth in March 2016,” NASA said.
UNITED STATES
Ex-CEO runs for president
Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina plans to launch her campaign for next year’s Republican Party presidential nomination on May 4, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Fiorina is to announce her candidacy online and hold a media conference call, the report said, citing a person with knowledge of her plans. A Fiorina spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the report.
UNITED STATES
Town backs bare fronts
A bohemian Californian beach resort is seeking to allow topless sunbathing, citing European cultural ties to justify a loosening of sometimes prudish norms. Local councillors in Venice Beach, just outside Los Angeles, voted on Tuesday to allow women to remove their tops on the waterfront where tourists mingle with skateboarders, musicians and other revelers. The resolution, announced on the Web site of the Venice Neighborhood Council, now goes to the Los Angeles City Council, which can block the move. In its resolution, the council said that the town “was founded and designed around the European culture of Venice, Italy. Since “topless bathing is commonplace throughout Europe, much of the rest of the world and many places within the US,” Venice “supports women being afforded the same rights as men to sunbathe topless on the sands of Venice Beach.”
RUSSIA
Test missile crashes
A surface-to-air missile crashed shortly after being launched in the north on Wednesday, local news agencies said, in a failed test that will be seen as an embarrassment for the country’s military forces. An official speaking on condition of anonymity initially said the incident had involved an experimental military rocket, but state-owned weapons manufacturer Almaz-Antey was later quoted as saying it was an Antey-2500 missile that fell back to the ground. The test was meant to “give an assessment of the maneuverability of a modernized missile of the surface-to-air Antey-2500 missile system,” the firm’s spokesman told local news agencies. The missile “veered off-course and self-destructed” shortly after its launch, the spokesman said, with debris falling within the security zone of the Plesetsk military cosmodrome. The Antey-2500 missile system is an upgraded version of Russia’s sophisticated S-300 air defense system. The Russian space agency declined to comment. The defense ministry provided no immediate comment.
CHINA
Top fugitive officials listed
The government has issued a list of its top 100 officials wanted on suspicion of corruption who are believed to have fled abroad. Photos of the suspects were splashed across two pages of the official China Daily newspaper yesterday, along with their names, ages, hometowns, languages spoken and the crimes they are suspected of committing. Bribery, embezzlement and fraud appeared to be the most common charges. The corruption watchdog agency says Interpol has issued arrest notices for all 100. It said the majority were believed to have fled to Canada and the US. China has launched a pair of transnational operations codenamed “Fox Hunt” and “Sky Net” seeking the return of suspects from abroad as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) overall war on corruption.
CHINA
Man jailed for defacing Mao
A Beijing court has sentenced a man to 14 months in jail for defacing the giant painting of communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) displayed near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, state media reported. Sun Bing (孫兵), 42, was arrested at the scene in March last year after he threw a bottle of ink on Mao’s portrait. The court ruled on Wednesday that he had “defied the law when he made a mess and caused public disorder,” the Global Times reported. The paper did not give Sun’s motive for defacing the portrait. Calls to the Dongcheng District People’s Court went unanswered.
AUSTRALIA
Blogger lied about cancer
A blogger and author who became a hit after claiming she was winning a battle with brain cancer through wholefoods and alternative therapies yesterday admitted she was lying and never had the disease. Belle Gibson launched her successful The Whole Pantry business in 2013 — billed as the world’s first health, wellness and lifestyle app community — on the back of healing herself naturally. She also published The Whole Pantry cookbook last year, which publisher Penguin pulled from sale last month when suspicions sparked by the local media first arose. Gibson, a 23-year-old mother of one, has now admitted she fabricated the cancer, when quizzed by the Australian Women’s Weekly. “No. None of it is true,” she said in an interview published yesterday entitled “My lifelong struggle with the truth.” Reports said she had received hate mail and even death threats since being exposed.
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
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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