UNITED STATES
Obama commutes sentences
President Barack Obama on Monday granted commutations to 46 convicted drug traffickers, saying their original sentences were unduly harsh under outdated laws. The move brings the total number of commutations Obama has issued to 89, reducing the sentences of more convicts than the past four presidents combined. “These men and women were not hardened criminals, but the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years; 14 of them had been sentenced to life for nonviolent drug offenses, so their punishments did not fit the crime,” Obama said in a video released on the White House Facebook page. The president said that if these convicts had been sentenced under current laws, nearly all would have served their time by now. “I believe these folks deserve their second chance,” he said.
SAUDI ARABIA
Suspect kills father
Police shot dead a wanted suspected militant yesterday after he killed his own father, who had reported him to the authorities, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement carried on state media. “At 1am on Tuesday, while security men were taking measures to apprehend a security fugitive, accompanied by the man’s father, he left his house and fired with an automatic weapon, killing his father and wounding two security men,” the ministry said. Security forces fired back, killing the man, according to the statement, which said that authorities were investigating the incident, but gave no further details. Sabq.org, a news Web site affiliated with the government, said the incident took place in the southern city of Khamis Mushait.
NORTH KOREA
Student seeks quick release
A South Korean student from New York University who is being detained in North Korea on charges of entering the country illegally yesterday said that he hopes to be released soon. Won Moon-joo, who was presented to reporters in Pyongyang, said he was being treated well. He acknowledged breaking North Korean laws, but such admissions are often recanted by detainees after they are freed. Joo, 21, who has permanent resident status in the US, was arrested in April, accused of illegally entering via the Chinese border. “I would like to tell my family I am healthy, I hope to be home soon and to tell them not to worry too much,” Joo said. Joo did not explain why he tried to enter North Korea.
UNITED STATES
Sex toy epidemic strikes
Hundreds of sex toys have been seen hanging in recent days from power lines across Portland, Oregon, provoking laughter, blushing and lots of photos. The large white and bright orange objects appear to have been strung together in pairs, and have prompted numerous reports to the Portland Office of Neighborhood Involvement, department spokeswoman Lisa Leddy said on Monday. A spokesman for public utility Portland General Electric said he did not believe the rubber products posed a fire hazard. In online forums, Portlanders posted photographs of the objects above a number of major commercial streets, and speculated about their origins. Portland resident Lucila Cejas Epple said she first encountered the objects at a neighborhood street fair over the weekend. “You could spot them in several intersections and you could see all sorts of reactions to them,” she said. “Some would blush, others would laugh and most would take photos.”
BAHRAIN
Dissident freed from jail
Bahrain has freed prominent dissident Nabeel Rajab more than two months into a six-month jail term for insulting the authorities, citing health reasons, official news agency BNA said. King Hamad issued a royal decree granting Rajab, one of the Arab world’s best-known democracy activists, a special pardon, the agency reported late on Monday. An appeals court in May upheld a six-month sentence imposed for a tweet published in September last year deemed insulting to the kingdom’s security establishment. He was convicted of “publicly insulting two government bodies,” the attorney general’s office was quoted as saying at the time, referring to the defense and interior ministries.
SOUTH KOREA
Teacher fed ex-pupil feces
Police yesterday said they have detained a university design professor for allegedly forcing a former student to eat human feces and subjecting him to other cruel acts. The alleged violence began after the professor hired the former student in 2013 as an employee at a design-related organization that he runs, according to a statement from Seongnam Jungwon police station just south of Seoul. The professor and three other employees — also former students — allegedly beat the victim with a baseball bat and other weapons over what they said were professional mistakes and poor character. The three accomplices have also been detained. The defendants also allegedly placed plastic bags over the victim’s head before firing pepper spray inside them and forced him to eat their feces and drink their urine from plastic bottles on 16 different occasions, police said.
INDIA
Stampede leaves 27 dead
Twenty-seven people were killed and 40 injured yesterday in a stampede in the state of Andhra Pradesh, police said, as crowds surged to bathe in the Godavari River on the first day of a religious festival held once every 144 years. The stampede started after a woman fell down in a crowd pushing to get through a narrow entrance to the banks of the Godavari, said police deputy superintendent B. Ramakrishna of Rajahmundry District, where the festival is held. Police estimated the crowd swelled to more than 1 million yesterday. The government of the southern state expects about 40 million pilgrims to attend the Godavari Maha Pushkaralu, a Hindu festival held at the banks of the holy river to offer prayers over the next 12 days.
ZIMBABWE
Writer Hove dies in Norway
Chenjerai Hove, a leading Zimbabwean writer and outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe, has died in Norway where he was living in exile, a friend and fellow writer said on Monday. Poet Chirikure Chirikure said Hove, 59, succumbed to liver failure. “Chenjerai passed away yesterday afternoon. Very sad indeed,” he said. The author of four novels, several collections of poetry and essays, Hove was equally at home writing in English and the local chiShona language. He was best known for his novel Bones, which won the 1989 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. The novel focused on the disenchantment of ordinary Zimbabwean citizens who saw little improvement in their lives after independence and the introduction of majority rule in 1980. In 2001 Hove won the German-Afrika Prize for his literary contribution to the freedom of expression. His works have been translated into several languages, including French, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Dutch and Danish.
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