COSTA RICA
Taiwanese jailed over fins
A court in the western port city of Puntarenas has sentenced a Taiwanese businesswoman, surnamed Tseng, to six months in prison over a fishing haul of illegally hacked-off shark fins destined for sale abroad, officials and environmentalists said on Thursday. It was the first criminal sentence in the country against the practice of shark finning, which involves slicing off a shark’s fins before dropping the live fish back in the sea. starving or being eaten. Shark fins fetch a high price in Asia, where they are often used in soups served on special occasions. Tseng’s was “a historic sentence,” said Gladys Martinez, lawyer for the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense. Her case began in October 2011, when her fishing boat, the Wan Jia Men 88, was found with 151 sharks aboard. Their fins had been chopped off. She was initially acquitted in 2014, but the matter went to appeal, and the court this week found her responsible for damage to the nation’s natural resources.
EL SALVADOR
Prison measures extended
Lawmakers have extended for another year a series of extraordinary prison measures aimed at cracking down on criminal gangs. Thursday’s landslide vote in the 84-seat Legislative Assembly means the measures first put in place last year are to remain through April next year. The measures let prison authorities put jailed gang members in more strict isolation, and give them more power to limit illicit phone use by inmates and establish severe penalties for telecoms that do not cooperate to block cell signals near lockups. Authorities said that gang leaders often issue orders for killings, extortion and other crimes even from behind bars. They said the measures have helped rein in skyrocketing homicide and other crime rates. Opponents said they violate human rights.
FRANCE
Fillon should quit race: poll
Seven out of 10 voters want conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon to step down, an opinion poll by Odoxa for France Info radio said yesterday, as a scandal over alleged “fake work” for his wife continued to weigh on his campaign. Fillon has apologized to the public over the way hundreds of thousands of US dollars in taxpayers’ money were paid to his wife, but has denied that the work was fake and has said he did nothing illegal. He has vowed to continue his campaign, despite losing his position as favorite to centrist rival Emmanuel Macron, and is contesting the legitimacy of an official investigation into the affair. The election is due to take place in April.
UNITED STATES
Shoppers wrangle deer
Pandemonium broke out at a southern Pennsylvania supermarket when a rogue deer smashed through its glass entrance and briefly ran amok. The doe burst into a Giant grocery store in the borough of Manchester on Monday, the York Daily Record reported. Once surprised shoppers figured out what the noise was, they worked together to wrangle the animal and force it outside. Robert Beck III, of Conewago Township, was in the store at the time with his wife. He said he heard a loud bang then people screaming: “Deer.” He caught a glimpse of the animal as it scampered toward the bakery section. “When I seen it, it was game on,” he said. An avid hunter, Beck grabbed the deer around its neck and forced it outside with help from two other men. The animal was in the store for about 50 seconds. “That’s like a rodeo record,” Beck said, adding: “I think she was scared from all those people.”
CHINA
Six dozing officials punished
Six officials in Hubei Province have been punished for dozing off in a meeting on how to motivate lazy bureaucrats, state media and the local government said. Pictures of the sleeping officials have received widespread coverage in the media over the past two days, amid President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) sweeping crackdown on corruption, extravagance and dereliction of duty. The Chinese Communist Party’s discipline bureau in Xiangyang, Hubei, on Thursday named the mid-level officials and said they had to write self-criticisms and make public apologies. The Global Times yesterday said the officials had, ironically, been attending a meeting on how to motivate lazy and sluggish officials.
HONG KONG
Vatican, Beijing near deal
The head of the Catholic Church in the territory has expressed optimism that the Vatican and Beijing can overcome the controversial issue of bishop appointments lying at the core of a decades-long dispute. Cardinal John Tong (湯漢) said in a lengthy essay published by the Hong Kong diocese that a “preliminary consensus has reportedly been reached” on the matter, and suggested that the pope could retain veto power over the ordination of mainland bishops under the new arrangement. The officially atheistic Chinese Communist Party cut relations with the Vatican in 1951. The two sides have been negotiating a resumption of ties, but a major stumbling block is Beijing’s insistence that a party-controlled body have the authority to appoint Chinese bishops, a decision the Holy See says belongs to the pope alone.
INDONESIA
Landslides kill at least 12
Twelve people, including three children, have been killed on the island of Bali after landslides triggered by heavy rains engulfed several villages, an official said yesterday. Several houses were also buried and badly damaged in the incident, which took place overnight from Thursday to yesterday in Bali’s central Kintamani District. “The extreme rain that occurred all day on Thursday has triggered landslides in three villages and 12 people have died,” National Board for Disaster Management spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said. Three children, aged one, seven and 10, died in two of the villages, he said, adding that five people were injured, three of them seriously. Local agency officials said villagers had been evacuated from the affected areas — far from the popular beach resorts of southern Bali — and no one else was believed to be missing. In December last year, 29 people died and 19 others were left missing when floods and landslides hit Garut in the west of main Java Island.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of