CHINA
Four judges suspended
Shanghai has suspended four judges over allegations that they patronized prostitutes, reports and officials said yesterday in the latest salacious scandal to result from online accusations. An inquiry was opened after an anonymous blogger, identified by state media only as being surnamed Ni, posted footage online last week alleging that five officials hired prostitutes at a resort in June. The Shanghai Higher People’s Court said on Tencent Weibo that Chen Xueming (陳雪明), the chief judge of its No.1 Civil Tribunal, and three other officials had been suspended. The court had previously said Zhao Minghua (趙明華), deputy chief judge of the tribunal, was among those named on Ni’s blog. Ni said Zhao intervened in a civil case in 2009 that caused him a huge financial loss, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported yesterday. Ni spent a year following Zhao, it said, “and discovered that he frequently went to nightclubs, owned several properties and had extramarital affairs.”
JAPAN
New warning over plant
Radioactive groundwater at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has likely risen above an underground barrier meant to contain it, presenting an “emergency” that the plant’s operator is not sufficiently addressing, a Nuclear Regulatory Authority official said yesterday. This contaminated groundwater is likely seeping into the sea, exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, and a workaround planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co will only forestall the growing problem temporarily, said Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force.
UNITED STATES
Police kill armed 14-year-old
A rookie New York City police officer shot and killed a 14-year-old boy on a street early on Sunday after he refused to drop his gun and pointed it in the direction of officers, authorities said. Shaaliver Douse died of a single gunshot to his jaw after the confrontation in the Bronx. Two officers were on foot patrol when they heard gunfire at about 3am local time. The officers responded to the scene and found the boy with a 9mm handgun firing shots at a fleeing man, authorities said. Douse had been in trouble with the law before. He was charged in May with attempted murder after a 15-year-old boy was shot the neighborhood where Douse lived.
CHILE
Rescued miners’ mine sold
The mine that was the scene of a spectacular rescue of 33 trapped miners three years ago is being sold, a newspaper said on Sunday. The sale of the San Jose mine in northern Atacama was agreed by the board of creditors of the San Esteban Mining Co, which declared bankruptcy immediately after the mine disaster. A collapse inside the gold and copper mine on Aug. 5, 2010, trapped 33 miners, who underwent a 69-day ordeal deep underground before they could be rescued.
UNITED KINGDOM
Capaldi is new Doctor Who
Scottish actor Peter Capaldi was on Sunday named as the new eponymous star of cult TV series Doctor Who. The BBC unveiled the 55-year-old Glaswegian as the 12th Time Lord during a live program on Sunday evening. “Being asked to play the Doctor is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself, I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can’t wait to get started,” said Capaldi, who will replace outgoing Doctor, Matt Smith.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
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