JAPAN
Death toll rises to 48
Searchers found a man’s body yesterday in a landslide-hit area in the south, bringing the death toll to 48 from two powerful earthquakes last week. Three people remained missing. Kumamoto Prefecture said that another 11 have died from illnesses believed to be related to the physical stress of evacuation. More than 100,000 people are homeless or have fled their homes as aftershocks continue to shake the area. Many are living in cramped conditions in shelters or even their cars, with limited food and water.
CHINA
Women warned over spies
The country is marking National Security Education Day with a poster warning young female government workers about dating handsome foreigners, who it said could turn out to have secret agendas. Titled Dangerous Love, the 16-panel, comic-book-like poster tells the story of an attractive young civil servant nicknamed Xiao Li, or Little Li, who meets a red-headed foreign man at a dinner party and starts a relationship. The man, David, claims to be a visiting academic, but he actually is a foreign spy who butters Xiao Li up with compliments on her beauty, bouquets of roses, fancy dinners and romantic walks in the park. After Xiao Li provides David with secret documents from her job at a government propaganda office, the two are arrested. In one of the poster’s final panels, Xiao Li is shown sitting handcuffed before two policemen, who tell her that she has a “shallow understanding of secrecy for a state employee.”
FRANCE
Baker fires homeless savior
A baker who promised to give his business to the homeless man who saved his life has fired him instead. Michel Flamant was close to dying of carbon monoxide poisoning when Jerome Aucant, the homeless man, raised the alarm. Flamant caused a minor media sensation by pledging to sell his business to Aucant for 1 euro (US$1.13). The 62-year-old said the abrupt change came after he went to his bakery shortly before midnight and found his would-be successor had invited a bunch of friends to drink on the premises in his absence. “Last week, I returned to the bakery at 10:30, 11 at night as usual and discovered that Jerome had set up a bar of sorts with wine and beer, and all his homeless friends in the oven room. I told him this was not part of the deal,” Flamant told the state radio channel France Bleu. “Tempers rose and he started insulting me, so I told him to pack his bags and go,” said the baker, who was saved when Jerome spotted him staggering around his bakery after a carbon monoxide leak.
UNITED STATES
Student sorry for nooses
The Tennessee university student whose art project, six rainbow-colored nooses hanging from a tree, was swiftly removed by police on Tuesday said that she did not intend to be racially insensitive or offend the gay community. The project was up for less than an hour on Monday before complaints prompted officials at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville to take it down. “My intention with my sculpture project was to address the cycle of death and rebirth that is represented by the arrival of spring,” the student, whose identity was not disclosed, was quoted as saying in a statement released by the university. “I had no social or political statements in mind. I did not take into consideration that nooses are a racially charged symbol, for that I am sorry.”
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