INDIA
Mogul gives villages billions
Technology mogul Azim Premji has announced he will donate nearly US$2 billion to fund education and development programs in villages in one of the largest charitable donations in the country’s history. Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd, India’s third-largest software services exporter, said on Wednesday he would transfer 213 million shares worth 88.4 billion rupees (US$1.95 billion) in the company to the Azim Premji Foundation by Tuesday. The trust is controlled by Premji, and he will continue to retain the voting rights of the transferred shares, the foundation and the company said in separate statements.
The foundation will use the new infusion of money to fund education programs and other initiatives in rural India as well as a new university it is establishing in Bangalore.
THAILAND
Passport forgery ring busted
Authorities in Thailand say at least some of the suspects arrested this week in Spain and Thailand in connection with an international ring that provided forged passports to terrorists may have passed fake documents to the perpetrators of the 2004 Madrid bombings. Authorities in Bangkok said yesterday the 10 suspects — seven in Spain and three in Thailand — belong to a group that received stolen passports, doctored them in the kingdom and then distributed them to terror groups.
UNITED KINGDOM
War crimes law changed
London sought to soothe strained ties with Israel on Wednesday by publishing an amendment to a law that puts visiting officials at risk of arrest for alleged war crimes. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the change would ensure that private arrest warrants for offenses under certain international laws, including as the Geneva Convention, would first have to be approved by the chief prosecutor. The move was welcomed by Israel, whose politicians and officials have been targeted by warrants brought by local pro-Palestinian campaign groups.
HONG KONG
Jewelers buy bogus bullion
Jewelers and pawn shops have been hammered by a gold scam after unwittingly buying hundreds of ounces of bogus bullion, the Financial Times reported yesterday. “It’s a very good fake,” Haywood Cheung (張德熙), president of the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society, the territory’s gold exchange, told the paper. Cheung said jewelers and pawn shops have discovered at least 200 ounces of fake bullion — worth about US$280,000 — so far this year. Among the fakes was a specimen with a pure gold coating that masked a complex alloy with similar properties to the precious metal, suggesting fraudsters used sophisticated techniques and equipment, the report said.
UNITED STATES
Man linked to slaying dies
A man police called a “person of interest” in the slaying of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen shot and killed himself at a Los Angeles residential hotel on Wednesday as Beverly Hills detectives served a search warrant, authorities said. The detectives were serving the warrant at the Harvey Apartments in Hollywood at about 6pm when the man shot himself, police said. The man, whose name was not released, died at the scene. Beverly Hills police Chief David Snowden told The Associated Press in an e-mail that the man “was a person of interest only” in Chasen’s death.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
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