BRITAIN
Rowling chair goes on sale
A chair J.K. Rowling used to write the first two volumes of her best-selling Harry Potter series is today to sell at an auction in New York. Pre-auction bidding via the Internet had on Monday reached US$65,000 for the modest 1930s-era oak chair, on which Rowling, 50, sat while writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the first two of seven volumes. Rowling received the chair — one of a mismatched set of four — free when she was a young single mother living in subsidized housing in Edinburgh. “This was the comfiest one, which is why it ended up stationed permanently in front of my typewriter, supporting me while I typed,” Rowling wrote in a letter accompanying the chair, the auction house conducting the sale, Heritage Auctions, wrote on its Web site.
THE NETHERLANDS
Police crack down on drugs
Hundreds of police on Monday raided about 100 premises in a swoop on drug gangs in the nation’s south, prosecutors said. Fifty-five suspects were detained in Operation Meeting Point, prosecutors said in a statement, adding that 111 homes and commercial properties had been searched. “Around 1,500 police and law enforcement officers are involved,” the statement said, adding that the operation targeted drug production, particularly cannabis and ecstasy. Police raided a suspected meeting place for criminal gangs at a business in the small village of Best, outside Eindhoven, which had been under close surveillance for several years. “Some 700 people visited this meeting place. They will all be intensely scrutinized to see whether they are guilty of any offenses,” prosecutors said. “Police used surveillance of the premises to initiate other investigations, in which suspects were arrested, weapons found, drugs intercepted and drug labs and cannabis plantations closed down.”
UNITED STATES
op court to rule on juries
The Supreme Court on Monday said it would examine a case involving alleged racial bias during jury deliberations of a Hispanic man’s sex crimes trial. The case is to center around two core concepts of the judicial system: that defendants have the right to be tried by an impartial jury and that a jury’s deliberations are secret. Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez was convicted of unlawful sexual contact and harassment in a 2007 incident involving two teenage girls at a racetrack in Denver, Colorado. After the conviction, one of the jurors reported to Pena Rodriguez’s lawyer that another juror made racist statements during the deliberations.
UNITED STATES
IRS warns of phishing scams
As tax season draws to a close, authorities are warning of an alarming rise in phishing scams designed to steal sensitive personal and financial information. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) earlier this year said it has noticed “an approximate 400 percent surge in phishing and malware incidents so far in the 2016 tax season,” and warned of new fraud schemes that aim to get businesses, as well as taxpayers, to turn over personal information. Phishing refers to fraudulent e-mails disguised to appear to come from associates or officials, and ask for information such as passwords or personal information that can be used for identity theft or other fraud schemes. One of the newer schemes targets payroll and human resources professionals with fake e-mails that appear to come from company executives requesting personal information on employees, the agency warned last month.
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
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
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