■ CHINA
Official fired over funeral
A ranking official in the southern part of the country has been sacked for arranging an extravagant funeral for his mother, state media reported yesterday. Xie Pingfa (謝平發), former director of the highway bureau in Lufeng city in Guangdong Province, invited more than 1,000 people to the funeral in November which included a 100-table banquet, Xinhua news agency said. The event caused outrage among local residents and the local branch of the Communist Party's discipline commission launched an investigation leading to Xie's dismissal as a "bad social influence," according to Xinhua.
■ CHINA
Teens arrested for murder
Police have arrested four teenage boys for kidnapping their classmate for ransom and killing him, media said yesterday, amid worsening crime in the booming southern province of Guangdong. The suspects, aged 15 to 17, kidnapped their classmate, Zhao Shaoxu (趙少旭), in Shantou city in Guangdong on Dec. 29, the online edition of Xinhua news agency said, quoting the Guangzhou Daily. They murdered the 15-year-old victim within hours but phoned his father repeatedly to demand 500,000 yuan (US$67,000) in ransom. The father, a private entrepreneur, recognized the voice of one of the callers and reported it to police. The boys were found the next day and confessed.
■ CHINA
Vulgarity crackdown begins
The government is launching a nationwide crackdown on sexually suggestive video and audio products, in the latest effort by government censors to curb content considered to be in bad taste. During the three-month campaign, audio and video producers should stop making "vulgar" products and recall those that are already on the market, the country's General Administration of Press and Publication said. "Some of the video and audio products are coarsely made, containing materials of bad taste," the regulator said in a notice on its Web site. The questionable material includes suggestive language and partially nude images used to promote sales, it said.
■ MALAYSIA
More arrests made over tape
Police have made two more arrests over a sex tape featuring the health minister who was forced to resign over the scandal last week, reports said yesterday. The New Straits Times said a 48-year-old DVD vendor found in possession of three copies of the recording, and a woman in her 20s, were detained on Saturday on suspicion of distributing the footage. Police have already arrested a 29-year-old beauty salon owner and a 50-year-old farmer over the video, which showed married minister Chua Soi Lek having sex in a hotel room with an unidentified woman.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Missing sailor found dead
One of the 14 sailors missing from a cargo ship that sank off the south coast last week was found dead on Saturday, the Coast Guard said. Local fisherman found the body in their net at around 1:50am at a site 19km from where the cargo ship sank on Dec. 25, the Coast Guard said in a statement. Family members later identified the body as that of Ye Heung-rak, 54, the Coast Guard said. Ye was one of 15 sailors aboard the ship, which sank in bad weather off the coast of Yeosu, 455km south of Seoul, while carrying 2,000 tonnes of nitric acid. One crew member was rescued hours after the accident, but 13 others are still missing. On Friday, divers found the ship on the sea floor in about 67m of water.
■ UNITED STATES
Truck full of bulls hijacked
Somebody hijacked a truck full of rodeo bulls bound for a professional bull riding show, then abandoned them after running out of gas, authorities said. The truck and its cargo were found early on Saturday with an empty gas tank on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, police said. The bulls -- about a dozen valued at US$100,000 -- were unharmed. A suspect had not been arrested. Police Sergeant Robert Durbin said the animals were being delivered to Nashville's Municipal Auditorium for the show when the thief jumped into the cab late on Friday. A woman in the truck escaped despite the carjacker's attempts to keep her inside, witnesses said.
■ UNITED STATES
Mum sorry for Iraq lies
A Texas woman apologized on Friday for a "bad decision" in helping her six-year-old daughter win tickets to a Hannah Montana concert with an essay that falsely claimed the girl's father died in Iraq. Priscilla Ceballos said she had not intended to mislead the contest sponsor but got caught up in helping her daughter "realize her dream of seeing Hannah Montana." "Instead I brought so much negative attention to my family," Ceballos said, reading a statement on NBC's Today show. "Please accept my heartfelt apology and please do not punish my child for my mistake." Ceballos apologized specifically to the military and military families for falsely claiming the girl's father died in a roadside bombing in Iraq.
■ UNITED STATES
Trail hole digger arrested
Police said they arrested a man who admitted digging holes on a park bicycle trail in Fullerton, California, as payback for nearly being run down by a cyclist. Warren John Wilson, 52, faces a single felony count of vandalism, police Sergeant Linda King said on Friday. King said nearly 50 holes measuring about 30cm by 60cm have been found since June along a trail at Laguna Lake Park and in some cases attempts had been made to hide them from cyclists. She said some riders went over their handlebars after hitting the holes, but none reported major injuries. Detectives watching the trails questioned Wilson, who said he had nearly been run over by a mountain bike rider and began digging the holes in retaliation, King said.
■ UNITED STATES
Chicken bones lead to arrest
A trail of chicken bones left at a burglary scene more than a year ago has led investigators to a Kansas prison inmate with a long rap sheet and a hefty appetite. Authorities on Friday charged John Wyatt Weaver, 43, with two counts of burglary and one count of stealing a firearm. No bond was set because Weaver is already serving time at Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas for an unrelated crime. Police tracked down the suspect through DNA left on six chicken bones strewn throughout an apartment where several firearms were stolen in November 2006.
■ UNITED STATES
Hacker attacks state site
Hackers from China infiltrated the Web site of the Pennsylvania state government, but officials said they found no evidence of damage. Four state departments had security problems with their Web pages, leading to a decision to take down nearly all of the state's Web site on Friday morning. Spokeswoman Mia DeVane said there was no reason to think anyone's personal data had been compromised or that any damage occurred when a hacker "got into what we would say is a back door." By late afternoon, nearly all of the site was back online.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened
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