CHINA
Orchestra fires rude cellist
The Beijing Symphony Orchestra has fired a Russian cellist who was caught on camera verbally abusing a female passenger on a train, sparking an online outcry over the behavior of foreigners in China. The orchestra said its reputation had been “badly damaged” by the actions of Oleg Vedernikov, who was shown rudely insulting a fellow train passenger who repeatedly asked him to take his feet off the back of her seat. Vedernikov has apologized over the May 14 incident in a video posted online. This has done little to dampen the controversy over his actions, shortly after video footage of a British tourist apparently sexually assaulting a Chinese woman in Beijing was posted on the Internet. Many Web users yesterday welcomed the musician’s dismissal.
JAPAN
World’s tallest tower opens
The world’s tallest tower and the country’s biggest new landmark, the Tokyo Skytree, opened to the public yesterday. Nearly 8,000 visitors were expected to take high-speed elevators up to the observation decks of the 634m tower to mark its opening. Some reportedly waited in line more than a week to get the coveted tickets for a panoramic view, though yesterday ended up being cloudy in Tokyo. Skytree is recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest tower, beating out the Canton Tower in China, which is 600m. The world’s tallest structure is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands 828m.
INDIA
Passengers burn to death
A passenger train rammed into a freight train before dawn yesterday in the south, killing at least 15 people in a fiery wreck, officials said. The freight train had been stopped at the station near Penukonda in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh State when the Hampi Express slammed into it. Four coaches of the passenger train derailed when the driver applied emergency brakes on seeing the freight train on the same track, district official Durga Das said. One of the coaches caught fire, trapping many passengers in the coach. At least eight people burned to death, said Charu Sinha, a top police official in Anantpur.
NEPAL
Everest death toll rises
A mountaineering official in Nepal says climbers have reported seeing another body on Mount Everest, raising the death toll to four for one of the worst days ever on the world’s highest mountain. Nepali mountaineering official Gyanendra Shrestha said yesterday that the body of Chinese climber Ha Wen-yi was spotted not far from where three other climbers died. Ha and the other victims — German doctor Eberhard Schaaf, Nepal-born Canadian Shriya Shah and South Korean mountaineer Song Won-bin — died on Saturday on their way down from the 8,848m summit.
SOUTH KOREA
‘Flight attendants’ in uproar
Airline flight attendants are fuming over nightclubs in the South Korean capital that feature sexy waitresses dressed in skimpy copies of cabin crew uniforms, a newspaper reported yesterday. Outside a subway station in southern Seoul, young women attired like flight attendants handed out leaflets advertising one such “concept” bar, the JoongAng Ilbo daily said on its Web site. “Beautiful flight attendants will provide you with best service,” the leaflets promised. A South Korean airline official said his company had protested to the bars, who promised to stop using such uniforms in future.
UNITED STATES
Activist worried for helpers
The mentor for a blind Chinese activist who arrived in New York over the weekend says he’s very troubled about three people now at the mercy of Chinese authorities for helping him. New York University law professor Jerome Cohen expressed the concerns of Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠) to reporters on Monday. After Chen fled his village, his nephew was arrested and charged with intent to commit homicide — for stabbing and wounding attackers beating up the young man’s parents. Chen is asking Chinese authorities to release the nephew. Cohen told reporters the dissident is “seriously troubled” because he cannot protect others who protected him: a woman who drove his getaway van and an academic who cared for Chen and who Cohen says is now under house arrest.
UNITED STATES
Seagrass stores carbon
Coastal seagrass can store more heat-trapping carbon per square kilometer than forests can, which means these coastal plants could be part of the solution to climate change, scientists said in a new study. Even though seagrasses occupy less than 0.2 percent of the world’s oceans, they can hold up to 83,000 metric tonnes of carbon per square kilometer, a global team of researchers reported on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. That is more than twice the 30,000 tonnes of carbon per square kilometer a typical terrestrial forest can store. Earth’s oceans are an important carbon sink — keeping climate-warming carbon dioxide from human-made and natural sources out of the atmosphere — and seagrasses account for more than 10 percent of all the carbon buried in oceans each year, the scientists found.
UNITED STATES
Mom-impersonator booked
A man who dressed up as his mother in a bizarre real-estate fraud that involved doctoring her death certificate and cashing her Social Security retirement checks for six years after she died was sentenced on Monday to more than 13 years behind bars. Thomas Parkin was convicted on May 3 on charges including grand larceny and mortgage fraud. He was sentenced on Monday to between 13-2/3 and 41 years in prison. Prosecutors said the scheme lasted six years and involved Parkin wearing a blond wig, dress and oversized sunglasses. The 51-year-old Parkin said at sentencing that he never hurt anyone or used stolen funds for personal gain or injury. When his mother, Irene Prusik, died in 2003 at age 73, he began impersonating her to cash her Social Security checks and keep her US$2.2 million brownstone home in Park Slope, a leafy neighborhood in the borough of Brooklyn, prosecutors said.
UNITED STATES
Granny charged with murder
A 74-year-old woman has been charged with murder in the shooting death of her 17-year-old grandson. Police said Jonathan Hoffman called police and told an emergency dispatcher that he had been shot in the chest by his grandmother, Sandra Layne, and “was going to die.” By the time officers arrived at the family’s upscale condo in a Detroit suburb, police said at least four more shots from a .40 caliber handgun had been pumped into the high-school senior. A West Bloomfield Township detective told a judge during a Monday court hearing that eight entry and exit wounds were found in Hoffman’s body after the Friday afternoon shooting in the condo he shared with his grandparents northwest of Detroit.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
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