■CHINA
7th Foxconn worker dies
A worker was killed after falling from a Foxconn dormitory, the seventh to die this year after falling from buildings at the world’s top contract maker of cellphones, state media reported yesterday. Foxconn, whose clients include Apple and Sony Ericsson, has faced criticism over the welfare of its employees after the spate of apparent suicides. Police were investigating whether the latest death was suicide, Xinhua news agency said. A total of nine Foxconn workers have plunged from buildings this year, it said, adding that two of them did not die. The Taiwanese firm has a sprawling factory base in the southern city of Shenzhen where an estimated 300,000 workers churn out products for the world’s leading computer and phone companies in round-the-clock shifts.
■PAKISTAN
Bombing suspects nabbed
A senior US military official says Pakistan now has at least two men in custody on suspicion of helping to finance the Times Square bombing attempt. The investigation into the May 1 attempt in New York has widened as authorities in the US and Pakistan follow the money trail. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to reporters to discuss the sensitive issue of Pakistani cooperation in the probe. It is not clear whether the two are members of the Pakistani Taliban, which US authorities say was behind the plot.
■UNITED STATES
Congress iffy on commandos
A group of lawmakers are questioning President Barack Obama administration’s efforts to establish ties with an Indonesian commando unit accused of human rights abuses. The 13 lawmakers sent a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. They are worried about whether Indonesia will punish senior officers for past abuse. The US lifted an overall ban against training the Indonesian military in 2005, but it kept restrictions against the special forces group Kopassus. Rights groups say Kopassus was linked to disappearances in 1997 and 1998.
■AUSTRALIA
Obama to visit next month
US President Barack Obama’s postponed visit to Australia will be rescheduled to June 18, it was reported yesterday, with an address to parliament ahead of a family weekend in Sydney. The White House is yet to make an announcement on the visit, which was cancelled in March as Obama fought to secure health reforms, but newspapers said preparations were underway for the rescheduled date. Obama, who bills himself as the US’ first Pacific president, was to address lawmakers in Canberra on the 18th before spending the weekend in Sydney with his family, the reports said, citing government sources. The visit is expected to “stick to much the same schedule as had been planned for March,” the reports added.
■CHINA
School stabber gets death
A man who stabbed 29 school children and three teachers has been sentenced to death after a half-day trial, state media reported yesterday. Xu Yuyuan (徐玉元), 47, an unemployed local, was found guilty of attacking a kindergarten in Taixing city in Jiangsu Province last month. A string of attacks at schools has killed a total of 27 people and injured more than 80 since March, prompting calls for better protection of students and worries about the social malaise that some see underneath China’s rapid economic growth. Xu told the court that his motive was to “vent his rage against society,” Xinhua reported.
■UNITED STATES
Murder charges for mother
Prosecutors in Farmington, Utah, said on Friday they may file murder charges against the mother of a four-year-old boy whose body was found in a canyon earlier this week. Searchers dug up Ethan Stacy’s badly beaten and disfigured body on Tuesday, about 10 days after he arrived in Utah for a summer visit with his mother, Stephanie Sloop, 27. Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings said both Sloop and her husband, Nathanael Sloop, 31, will likely be charged with aggravated murder in the boy’s death. Before Friday, the possibility of murder charges had only been discussed for Nathanael Sloop. Police said Stephanie Sloop initially told officers her son had wandered away from his Layton apartment building.
■VENEZUELA
Sunken rig had problems
An offshore natural gas platform that sank off in the Caribbean encountered problems last year before being hired by the Venezuelan government, an official in nearby Trinidad and Tobago said on Friday. Lieutenant Kirk Jean-Baptiste, spokesman for the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard, confirmed that authorities received a distress call from the rig Aban Pearl platform on Aug. 14 because it was tilting after one of its floating devices was damaged. He said that by the time the Coast Guard arrived, those aboard the rig had been able to correct the problem. The platform sank on Thursday after all 95 workers aboard safely evacuated.
■UNITED STATES
Mother tries to drown baby
An unhappy mother hurled her toddler daughter into the chilly Hudson River in New York and then jumped in herself in an apparent murder-suicide attempt intended to spite her husband, prosecutors said on Friday. Dispirited after a few years of moving around because of her husband’s job, Devi Silvia told relatives she wanted to go back to her native India with her 19-month-old daughter shortly before the river plunge on Tuesday, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Robert Hettleman said. Later, “she told us that she was sad and lonely and angry at her husband, and that she did this horrific act on purpose,” he said as she was arraigned on attempted murder and other charges.
■CUBA
Blogger released from jail
An appeals court wiped out a 20-month jail sentence against a blogger with ties to the Ladies in White dissident group who had been convicted of mistreating her grown daughter, ordering the woman on Friday to pay a fine of about US$14 instead. Dania Garcia had already been released last week from the high-security Manto Negro jail, on the southwestern outskirts of Havana, where she had been ordered to serve her sentence. A judge ruled at the time that she could await the verdict from home, a strong sign the sentence would be thrown out.
■UNITED STATES
Man arrested for stun gun
Federal authorities arrested a Japanese man in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Friday after he allegedly tried to board a flight to Tokyo with a stun gun in his carry-on bag. Prosecutors charged Hiroki Suzuki with one count of carrying a dangerous concealed weapon while attempting to board All Nippon Airways Flight 1051. An affidavit filed in US District Court in Honolulu said Suzuki hid the Muscle Man stun gun in a small black canvas pouch in his carry-on bag. A Transportation Security Administration official found the device during an X-ray scan. Suzuki allegedly told FBI agents he bought the stun gun in Japan about a year ago for protection.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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