CHINA
‘Liberate fertility’: delegates
Delegates to the National People’s Congress are urging the overhaul or even scrapping of controversial family planning rules, saying that radical steps are needed to “liberate fertility.” Birth rates plummeted for the second consecutive year last year. Policymakers fret about the effects that a long-term decline would have on strained health and social services. Some have said the government should even remove all references to family planning from the constitution. “Continued control over fertility will inevitably defeat the purpose and make it even harder to resolve ingrained population problems,” Guangdong Province delegate Li Bingji (李秉記) said.
NORTH KOREA
Election sees 99.99% turnout
Turnout in the single-candidate elections hit 99.99 percent this year, the official KCNA news agency said yesterday — up from 99.97 percent the last time that they were held. With participation figures that Western democracies would never achieve, millions of citizens head to nationwide polls every five years to elect the rubber-stamp legislature known as the Supreme People’s Assembly. This year’s turnout fell just short of 100 percent as those “abroad or working in oceans” were unable to take part, the news agency reported.
PHILIPPINES
Duterte calls women ‘bitches’
President Rodrigo Duterte has continued his offensive rhetoric against women, addressing female police and army staff at a conference in honor of them as puta. Speaking at an event celebrating Outstanding Women in Law Enforcement and National Security of the Philippines, Duterte took the chance to take women to task for criticizing him. Addressing the almost exclusively female audience of military and police as puta (“bitch”) and “you crazy women,” Duterte said that women are “depriving me of my freedom of expression.”
INDONESIA
Liberated suspect celebrated
Relatives and neighbors of the woman accused of killing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother in Malaysia prepared an emotional welcome home party after charges against her were unexpectedly dropped. In Rancasumur, the Javanese village where Siti Aisyah grew up, residents said they cried with joy when they heard she had been freed. Yesterday, her aunt Siti Sudarmi was preparing Aisyah’s favorite spicy beef dish as crowds of reporters waited outside the family home and excited children ran around the neighborhood. Rahayu, a factory garment worker, said: “I really want to advise her to not go back working abroad,” Rahayu said. “It’s better for her to stay at home and get a job here.”
AFGHANISTAN
Taliban kill 13 troops
The Taliban killed at least 13 Afghan soldiers in battles that raged for three days in western Badghis Province where insurgents overran several army checkpoints, officials said yesterday. The fate of a dozen other soldiers is unknown, provincial governor spokesman Jamshid Shahabi said, adding that the fighting erupted on Saturday in Bala Murghab District. The military carried out several airstrikes and dispatched reinforcements. Forty-two insurgents were killed and 15 troops were wounded in the fighting, Shahabi said. However, Mohammed Naser Nazari, a member of the provincial council, gave a higher casualty toll, saying that 20 soldiers were killed and 20 others remain missing. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack.
SLOVENIA
Woman cuts off own hand
A woman and a relative have been detained for allegedly cutting off her hand with a circular saw to get nearly 400,000 euros (US$451,151) in insurance compensation, police said on Monday. The 21-year-old and her relative, 29, face up to eight years in prison on charges of attempted fraud. “With one of her accomplices, she intentionally amputated her hand at the wrist with a circular saw, hoping to stage it as an accident,” police spokesman Valter Zrinski told a news conference. The group intentionally left the hand behind, hoping to receive three times higher compensation for permanent disability, police said. However, authorities managed to pick up the hand in time, and doctors in a hospital in the capital, Ljubljana, managed to sew it back on, Zrinski said.
BELGIUM
Museum killer gets life
A French extremist who shot dead four people in a terrorist attack at a Jewish museum was yesterday sentenced to life in prison by a Brussels court, after prosecutors branded him a “coward” and a “psychopath.” Mehdi Nemmouche was last week convicted of “terrorist murder” for the anti-Semitic gun rampage in the capital in May 2014, a crime committed following his return from Syria’s battlefields. Before jurors retired to consider the sentence on Monday, the 33-year-old had smirked and told the criminal court: “Life goes on.”
FRANCE
Tapie on trial over payout
Flamboyant businessman Bernard Tapie went on trial on Monday accused of defrauding the state of nearly half a billion euros with a massive 2008 arbitration award that landed IMF managing director Christine Lagarde in hot water. The 76-year-old former minister, who rose from humble beginnings to build up a sporting and media empire that once included the Olympique de Marseille soccer club, is one of six people on trial in the latest chapter of a two-decade legal saga that centers on a payment of 404 million euros awarded to Tapie by an arbitration panel.
UNITED STATES
Budget to reduce subsidies
President Donald Trump’s budget for next year on Monday proposed a 15 percent cut for the Department of Agriculture, calling its subsidies to farmers “overly generous” at a time when they are going through the worst crisis in decades because of depressed commodity prices and Trump’s trade tariffs. The rural heartland helped carry Trump to victory in 2016, but is calling for a deal with China to end the trade dispute. “The president’s budget request is a road map for how to make things worse for farmers, ranchers and those who live in rural communities,” House of Representatives Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson said.
UNITED STATES
No date yet for Xi summit
Top US and Chinese officials yesterday held telephone talks to discuss the next steps in trade negotiations, Chinese state media said, as the White House said no date has been set for a summit. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer spoke with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (劉鶴) over the phone to discuss “key issues” on trade, Xinhua news agency reported. A possible summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) remains up in the air, the White House said on Monday.
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
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
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