CHINA
CCP denies megacity plans
Authorities in Guangdong Province have denied planning to unite nine towns to create the world’s biggest city in the Pearl River delta, state media reported yesterday. “The reports were totally false. There is no such plan,” Guo Yuewen, spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) provincial committee, was quoted as saying by the China Daily. Media had reported on a project to unite nine urban areas — including both Guangzhou and Shenzhen — into a megalopolis with a population of 42 million, according to the China Daily. The Pearl River delta was one of the first regions to open up to foreign business in the 1980s and is now among its richest, a giant manufacturing hub that produces about 10 percent of the country’s GDP.
CHINA
Web service blocks ‘Egypt’
The word “Egypt” was blocked from the country’s wildly popular Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been tightly restricted in state media. The Chinese Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of social unrest. A search for “Egypt” on the Sina microblogging service brings up a message saying, “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown.” The service has more than 50 million users. News on the Egypt protests has been limited to a few paragraphs and photos buried inside major news Web sites, but China Central Television had a report on its midday broadcast.
PHILIPPINES
Fake nuns caught at airport
Six women were detained at Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport after being caught trying to sneak into Lebanon dressed as nuns in a bid to get around a travel ban to the country, the immigration bureau said yesterday. The women were pretending to be on their way to Hong Kong for a religious seminar, but their unusual dress and behavior alerted officials, the bureau said. Under questioning they eventually admitted they were actually on their way to Lebanon to work as domestic helpers. Filipinos have been banned from going to Lebanon to work as domestics since 2007 because of the security situation and inadequate legal protection for laborers. “Their appearance aroused our suspicion especially after we noticed that one of them had red shoes, a colorful handbag and wore her nun’s costume improperly,” airport immigration officer Joel Valencia said in a statement. Investigators are now trying to locate the man who illegally recruited them for work in Lebanon, the bureau said.
UNITED STATES
Turtle smugglers indicted
A grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted two men from Japan for allegedly smuggling more than 50 live turtles and tortoises into the country. US attorney’s office spokesman Thom Mrozek said Atsushi Yamagami and Norihide Ushirozako were indicted Friday on counts of animal smuggling, conspiracy and wildlife trafficking. Each man could receive up to 26 years in prison if convicted of all charges. The two Osaka men were arrested this month at Los Angeles International Airport. US Federal prosecutors said they hid the reptiles in snack food boxes found in a suitcase. The indictment alleges the men planned to sell or trade the smuggled turtles. The arrests were tied to an undercover investigation that began last year into a turtle-smuggling operation. The men are scheduled to be arraigned on Monday morning and are being held without bond.
RUSSIA
Schools shut down by flu
Moscow and at least two other cities will close their elementary schools for a week because of a major flu outbreak that has mostly affected the young, media reports said yesterday. Grades one to eight of all Moscow schools will close tomorrow and only reopen the following week, Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted a spokesman for the city’s education department as saying. “Even today, some classes are already missing half their students,” said an official with Moscow’s health control service, which recommended the shutdown on Friday. Nearly 92,000 Muscovites are currently suffering from the flu or respiratory infections.
SWITZERLAND
Men dominate at Davos
Research shows that investing in women is good business and some firms have taken significant steps to increase their female staff, especially at the top — but at the world’s premiere economic forum, men still outnumber women by a ratio of about 6 to 1. Still, the World Economic Forum is making progress — not only in tackling the gap between men and women appearing in several panels, but in producing an index ranking 134 countries on their success in eliminating inequality and establishing a group of 50 influential men and women to focus on ways for women to crack the glass ceiling, especially in business. Responding to a suggestion from this Global Gender Parity Group, the forum in April asked its 100 major business members to include at least one woman in its delegation to Davos.
VENEZUELA
Chavez opponent to be tried
A Caracas court on Friday ordered an opponent of President Hugo Chavez to be tried on charges of hiding explosives in his home. Alejandro Pena Esclusa, who was arrested on July 12, called the case a politically motivated vendetta, saying in a statement that he was a “victim of a plot by the Venezuelan government” in response to his vocal criticisms. Authorities said agents who raided his apartment found about 100 detonators and 900g of C-4 explosives. Pena called the charges preposterous, saying authorities planted explosives in his eight-year-old daughter’s desk drawer. It’s unclear when his trial could begin.
VENEZUELA
Cholera cases climb to 111
The number of cholera cases has jumped to 111 as more people tested positive after attending a wedding with contaminated food in the Dominican Republic, Health Minister Eugena Sader said on Friday. The patients were all receiving treatment and 27 were hospitalized, Sader told TV network Telesur. The number of cases rose swiftly on Friday. Authorities had said a day earlier that 37 people had the virus in the country and that 12 others were hospitalized in the Dominican Republic.
COLOMBIA
Two women fight over body
The body of deceased miner Edgar Carvajal, one of 21 killed on Wednesday in a gas explosion, was claimed by two women on Friday, both of whom insist they enjoyed a committed relationship with him. “I came to claim the body of my husband ... when I was approached by a woman who said she had been his wife and lived with him for 10 years,” Luz Marina Rodriguez said. The other woman, Martha Bustos, tells a story appearing to fit with an apparent double life. “My husband almost never came to my house, but we loved each other very much,” Bustos said, adding that he sporadically stayed with her during the week, but never on weekends as he claimed to be at his mining job.
UNITED STATES
Witness paid in Posada case
A prosecution witness has admitted receiving nearly US$80,000 from the government for agreeing to testify against an elderly ex-CIA operative. Government informant Gilberto Abascal also said on Friday in El Paso, Texas, that federal authorities helped him obtain US citizenship. Cuba-born Abascal has spent five days testifying that he was on a boat that carried anti--communist militant Luis Posada Carriles from Mexico to Miami in March 2005. Posada then sought US citizenship and underwent immigration hearings in El Paso — during which he said he paid a people smuggler to drive him across the Texas border. Posada faces 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud for lying about how he made it to the US, and for denying his role in 1997 hotel bombings in Havana.
MEXICO
Bodyguards face charges
Federal prosecutors have charged two federal police officers with killing a bodyguard assigned to the mayor of the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities said on Friday. The shooting has raised tensions, with Mayor Hector Murguia claiming that overbearing officers shot the bodyguard even though he obeyed their orders to lay down his weapon. The Attorney General’s Office said in a statement on Friday that the officers are charged with homicide, abuse of authority and improper behavior, and that two officers have already been detained.
CUBA
Authorities free Farinas
High-profile dissident Guillermo Farinas was set free by authorities late on Friday after his third arrest in 48 hours, his mother said. Farinas, last year’s Sakharov rights prize winner, was released by security services after an emergency medical check-up undertaken after the detainee complained about chest pain, Alicia Hernandez, the activist’s mother, said via telephone from her home in Santa Clara. She said prison doctors had been called after her son had suffered from a shortness of breath, fever and chest pains. Cuban authorities arrested Farinas earlier on Friday along with “more than 20” other activists who had gone to lay flowers at a monument to national hero Jose Marti. The dissident had been also detained late on Thursday with around 10 other political activists, hours after being released from his initial detention on Wednesday afternoon.
MEXICO
Ex-mayors face arrest orders
More than 30 former mayors in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz have been ordered arrested on suspicion of corruption. Veracruz Deputy Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar says they are among 115 ex-municipal employees in the state charged with corruption between 2004 and 2008. He says the total amount suspected embezzled is 67 million pesos (US$5.5 million). The first to be arrested on Friday was Leonardo Mendoza, former mayor of the town of Benito Juarez.
UNITED STATES
Nude prize-seeker sentenced
A New York man has been sentenced to two years’ probation for streaking at a rally for President Barack Obama in Philadelphia. Twenty-four-year-old Juan Rodriguez was arrested on charges of indecent exposure, disorderly conduct and open lewdness after streaking at the October rally before thousands in the city’s Germantown section. He was trying to win a million-dollar prize offered by Internet billionaire Alki David. Rodriguez didn’t get the US$1 million.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
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