CHINA
Trial held to teach public
A court in Sichuan Province’s Langzhong City on Wednesday held an outdoor trial for eight migrant workers protesting against unpaid wages to “educate the public in law,” the state-run Beijing News reported yesterday. Chinese courts occasionally hold public trials involving criminal offenses, such as drug dealing and robbery, but such trials for labor offenses are rare. The workers were charged with obstructing police during a protest they staged last year to claim unpaid wages from their employer, a developer, the paper said. The eight were sentenced to between six and eight months in prison.
AUSTRALIA
‘Koala’ diplomacy slammed
The opposition Labor Party on Thursday launched a “Waste-pedia” booklet and Waste Watch Web site, accusing the government of over-lavish spending — including A$400,000 (US$305,154) on “koala and other marsupial-related events.” “This government is obsessed with hugging koalas. We’ve had A$400,000, which included [Foreign Minister] Julie Bishop paying A$133,000 to fly four koalas to Singapore Zoo,” opposition MP Pat Conroy said outside parliament. “She spent I think it was A$130,000 taking diplomats to Western Australia where they hugged wombats for a change — so at least they changed up the marsupial.” It was not immediately clear how the figures were reached.
ROMANIA
Village thanks Snoop Dogg
A small village in Transylvania is reveling in the virtual attention caused by a spelling mistake by US rapper Snoop Dogg. Posting a selfie on Instagram, the rapper, who has been on tour in Bogota, Colombia, told his fans he was in Bogata. Romanians soon spotted the mistake and began posting about it. A tourist Web site, visitbogata.com, also popped up, describing the village of 2,000 as the “best place for chillin’ in Romania.” There is no hotel in the village, so visitors are advised to bring a sleeping bag. If they get hungry they can feast on a twist of the famous Hungarian goulash. “It was a mistake, but it’s a good advert for us,” Bogata Mayor Laszlo Barta said yesterday.
KENYA
Escaped lion injures man
A lion strayed from a national park on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, mauling a 63-year-old man, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said. The man was hospitalized after the attack early yesterday on Mombasa Road and is now out of danger, spokesman Paul Udoto said by phone. Three KWS teams have “sighted the lion and are driving it back, deeper into the park,” he said. The incident comes about a month after six lions strayed from Nairobi National Park, sparking a similar search mission. The park is home to between 30 and 40 lions, Udoto said.
UNITED STATES
Ashton Carter criticizes Iran
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said on Thursday that Iran might have violated international law when it seized 10 US sailors in the Persian Gulf in January. “Iran’s actions were outrageous, unprofessional and inconsistent with international law,” Carter said in a testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The sailors were detained after veering off course into Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, the home of an Iranian navy base, and were freed after about 14 hours. Video footage released by the Iranian government showed the sailors kneeling at gunpoint with their hands clasped behind their heads. At the time, Washington emphasized the sailors’ quick release, calling it a result of the diplomatic channels opened by the nuclear deal struck last year with Iran.
UNITED STATES
IS recruiter gets 22 years
A New York pizza shop owner who admitted he tried to recruit people for the Islamic State (IS) group has been sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. Mufid Elfgeeh was sentenced on Thursday. He pleaded guilty in December last year to attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Authorities said he tried to recruit three people to join the Islamic State to fight in Syria. He was operating a convenience store and pizza shop at the time.
GREECE
People traffickers arrested
Six suspected members of a trafficking network were arrested as they prepared to fly seven Iraqi migrants to Italy in a light aircraft, police said on Thursday. The gang of four were arrested in Messolonghi on Wednesday as a small Piper plane carrying the migrants, including four children, was about to take off. The migrants had been driven from Athens by the smugglers. “A criminal network was dismantled for illegally transferring the migrants from Greece to countries in western Europe on small aircraft,” police said in a statement. The network had successfully sent 12 groups of migrants to Italy, police said, adding that each passenger paid the smugglers between 4,500 and 7,500 euros (US$5,100 and US$8,500).
HAITI
Seven killed in tanker blast
At least seven people were killed and about 30 others seriously burned on Thursday in Haiti when a tanker truck belonging to the Total oil company caught fire and exploded. The accident took place in the town of Hinche, about 110km northeast of the capital Port-au-Prince. Witnesses said that the tanker hit a wall and spilled gasoline as it was getting in place to unload fuel at a Total service station. The flammable liquid spread and caught fire when it reached vendors cooking food on outdoor grills. The flames quickly returned to the tanker, which set off the explosion.
UNITED STATES
Chinese paper settles suit
The largest Chinese-language newspaper in the nation is to pay US$7.8 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it made reporters and others work up to 17 hours a day without overtime. The Chinese Daily News did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement, which was announced yesterday. Based in the Los Angeles, the paper has about 120,000 readers. Its employees, many of them Taiwanese, said they were expected to work long hours without rest, meal breaks or overtime pay.
‘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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in