IRAQ
Car bomb kills at least 63
A bombing claimed by the Islamic State group yesterday killed at least 63 people at a market in a Shiite area of north Baghdad, officials said. The blast, the single deadliest attack in the capital this year, comes as the government is locked in a political crisis that some have warned could undermine the fight against Islamic State. The bombing, which hit the Sadr City area at about 10am, also wounded at least 65 people, officials said. The blast set nearby shops on fire and left debris, including the charred, twisted remains of a vehicle, in the street. Dozens of angry people gathered at the scene of the bombing, blaming the government for the carnage. The Islamic State group issued an online statement claiming responsibility for the attack.
CHINA
Artificial ‘jellyfish’ seized
A tonne of artificial “jellyfish” has been seized by police, adding a new ingredient to the nation’s long recipe of fake foods. The marine animal is a popular appetizer, known for its crisp, but fleshy texture, often shredded and pickled in salt, vinegar and a little sugar. Fake “jellyfish,” made from chemicals, was first found at a food market in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, the local government said on its Web site. It had a high aluminum content, long-term consumption of which can damage bones and nerves, and lead to memory loss and mental decline. The vendors’ suppliers in neighboring Jiangsu Province sold more than 10 tonnes before being caught and between them two gangs raked in more than 170,000 yuan (US$26,000), the local government said. A total of six suspects were detained in two raids and police were investigating further, it added.
CHINA
Transgender complaint nixed
An arbitration panel has rejected a complaint by a man who claimed to have been unfairly dismissed for being transgender, his lawyer said yesterday, in what has been called the nation’s first such case. The plaintiff, who was born a woman, but identifies as a man and generally wears men’s clothing, was sacked after eight days by a health center in Guizhou Province, reports said. A labor arbitration committee in the province disregarded a recording of the employer allegedly saying he was sacked because of his transgender status, as attorney said. It also rejected his demand for a month’s wages and a written apology, ruling that he had been fired because he lacked “adequate skills” for the sales job. The employer was ordered to pay the man about 400 yuan in wages for the probation period.
JAPAN
Dozing train driver berated
A dozing train driver and a comic-book reading conductor have been berated by the nation’s biggest rail operator, media reports said on Tuesday, with the firm vowing to crack down on sloppy staff behavior. East Japan Railway carried out an internal probe which found, among other things, that one employee had driven a train through 16 stations in Tokyo earlier this year while feeling sleepy, public broadcaster NHK said. In another incident the firm discovered that a 57-year-old male conductor on duty was “intermittently” reading a comic book last month on the Yokohama line, southwest of Tokyo. Another on-the-job conductor, aged 53, was also found reading a book in Kofu, west of the capital. “I sincerely apologize as the acts could lead to distrust and fears among passengers,” East Japan Railway president Tetsuro Tomita said.
NETHERLANDS
‘Nose’ said to plan hits
Convicted gangster Willem Holleeder, who gained notoriety for the 1983 kidnapping of a Heineken beer tycoon, was accused in court on Tuesday of orchestrating hits on his two sisters and a prominent journalist from his jail cell. “Officials leading the investigation accused Holleeder at an initial appearance this morning, of plans to assassinate his sisters Astrid and Sonja Holleeder as well as crime reporter Peter de Vries,” prosecutors said a statement issued in Amsterdam. Known as “The Nose” after his prominent facial feature, 55-year-old Holleeder is in custody awaiting trial for a number of cases involving the Amsterdam underworld. Holleeder was arrested in his cell on April 11 “on suspicion of soliciting for the assassinations,” prosecutors said. “Holleeder allegedly already paid money and promised more should his plans indeed be carried out,” they added. His two sisters testified against him last year in a murder case involving the Amsterdam criminal underworld, the newspaper NRC reported, saying that Holleeder “wanted revenge.” “He doesn’t tolerate being crossed,” Astrid told the paper.
CANADA
Site connects Trump haters
A dating Web site is pledging to match Americans who cannot live with a Donald Trump presidency to Canadians looking for love, facilitating the pledge often made by US voters to move north if the real-estate billionaire is elected. “Maple Match makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency,” the Maple Match Web site reads, before offering a waiting list for interested singles.
UNITED STATES
Moose-chimes duet a hit
Forget Uptown Funk. The Alaska wild is grooving to the smooth “moose-ic” of wind chimes. Britta Schroeder shot video footage of a moose playing a one-part harmony with the wind chimes on the porch of her rural cabin near Denali National Park and Preserve, and it is quickly making its way across the Internet. Schroeder heard the chimes at about 10:30pm on May 4. She looked out the window of her home near Healy, Alaska, but it did not look windy. The chimes continued to sound for two to three more minutes. Then she heard a thump on her porch. “My dogs’ ears perked up,” she said. “I knew it was going to be an animal.” Sure enough, there was a moose, rubbing its head against the wind chimes and gumming the glass disc pendulum that hangs down from the middle of the instrument.
UNITED STATES
Prom photo captures twister
A couple of eastern Colorado teenagers posing for a traditional prom photograph received a unique memento as the girl’s mother snapped the shot with a tornado in the background. Heidi Marintzer of Wray, Colorado, said that when the twister first appeared on Saturday last week on the horizon, she and her 15-year-old daughter, Ali, along with the girl’s boyfriend, Charlie Bator, 18, had sought shelter indoors. Then, when the twister started to move away, Heidi Marintzer went outside with the couple and they posed for photographs in a neighbor’s backyard, with the tornado in the background. “We were just like, we can’t believe this, it’s so beautiful and yet it’s a tornado,” Heidi Marintzer said in a telephone interview. Two photographs that feature the twister, one showing the couple hugging and the other a close up of Ali with her tongue out, have gained widespread media attention and gone viral on social media.
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