CHINA
Officials recreate Kremlin
Local officials in a Beijing suburb have built themselves a white-walled, gold-domed office complex resembling Moscow’s Kremlin, state media reported, prompting anger among Chinese who condemned the lavish buildings. Photos published by the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper show the sprawling complex, whose arched windows and gleaming spires resemble those of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Russian presidential palace, flanked by factories churning out smoke in the background. The buildings, which were built to house the local weather, seismological, water services and landscaping bureaux, range in cost from 9.3 million yuan (US$1.5 million) to 21 million yuan, the paper reported. They were constructed in the mostly-rural Beijing suburb of Mentougou, whose name means “the ditch in front of the gate” in Chinese.
AUSTRALIA
Men build Lego car
It is the stuff children dream about, but a crowd-sourced project by a man and a Romanian teenager has made driving a car built with 500,000 Lego bricks a reality. The life-sized two-seater has a top speed of 30km per hour and is powered by four orbital engines with 256 pistons — all made of Lego — that run on compressed air. The car was designed by entrepreneur Steve Sammartino and Romanian tech guru Raul Oaida through a crowd-funding venture via Twitter. “I wanted to do something interesting that shows there are a myriad of possible innovations for cars. We wanted to be an example to open people’s minds,” Sammartino said. The yellow and black car, designed like a hotrod, took 20 months to complete. Apart from structural gear such as the wheels, tires, gauges and load-bearing components, only Lego bricks were used. Forty Australians supported the “Super Awesome Micro Project” campaign. and the car was built in Romania before being shipped to Melbourne for finishing touches.
JAPAN
Diplomat charged with arson
A diplomat in charge of accounting at the embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was charged yesterday with setting fire to the mission where US$260,000 has gone missing. Shinya Yamada, 30, the third secretary at the embassy in Kinshasa, was arrested earlier this month in Tokyo over allegations he set the blaze in June. Tokyo prosecutors indicted Yamada on charges that he had poured gasoline on offices at the premises and then set light to them. Yamada told police he was trying to destroy the mission to cover up the fact that he had embezzled embassy money, local reports have said. Yamada was reportedly a regular at casinos in Kinshasa and frequently borrowed money from colleagues. Police believe he had taken embassy money to fuel his gambling habit and the arson was his bid to remove evidence of his crime.
VIETNAM
Elephant kills zookeeper
A zookeeper was killed by a 2 tonne elephant after he tried to sneak into its cage to paint a fence, an official said yesterday. “The elephant lifted him up with his trunk and smashed him onto a water tank next to the cage,” said Nguyen Van Sang, an official at the Dai Nam tourism center where the zoo is located in southern Binh Duong Province. He said the victim was well known by the elephant, which had been at the zoo since the age of two in 2008. The handler, Doan Huu Tai, 27, was rushed to hospital after the attack on Monday, but did not survive, Sang said.
UNITED STATES
Family celebrates life
A California family is celebrating this holiday season after the mother and two of her three sons all received life-saving heart transplants for an inherited cardiac condition. Deanna Kremis and her sons, 17-year-old Matthew and 13-year-old Trevin, all suffer from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It is a genetic condition that causes the heart muscle to thicken until the heart cannot pump blood properly. Matthew and Trevin got their new hearts in 2007 within five weeks of each other. However, as they got healthier, their mother — who was diagnosed as an adult — began to fail. She finally got a new heart in July and her sons are helping her adjust to her new life.
MEXICO
Body found in suitcase
Police found the remains of a woman, with head and hands cut off, in a suitcase left in a metro rail station in Mexico City, security officials said on Monday. The macabre discovery took place late on Sunday in a station in the center of the City, they said. Metro users had alerted station personnel to the suspicious suitcase at the bottom of a flight of stairs. A note allegedly from the notorious La Familia drug cartel, based in Michoacan state, was protruding from the bag. Sources close to prosecutors said a body had been found, without offering further details. Local media said the remains belonged to a woman aged 25 to 30. The kidnapping in May from a Mexico City bar of 13 young people whose bodies were found three months later in unmarked graves sparked a debate about the presence of drug cartels in the capital.
RUSSIA
Pussy Riot members reunite
Two members of punk band Pussy Riot embraced each other on Tuesday as they reunited in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, a day after they walked out of separate prisons under an amnesty. Maria Alekhina, who had been serving her sentence at a prison colony in the central city of Nizhny Novgorod, flew into Krasnoyarsk to meet bandmate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was released from a prison hospital in the Siberian city. Tolokonnikova said she wanted to spend at least a week in Krasnoyarsk with her grandmother. The young women, both of whom have small children, embraced each other during their reunion at Krasnoyarsk airport, a reporter said. Freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov, one of a group of 30 Greenpeace activists charged with hooliganism for a protest against Arctic oil drilling in September, also joined the women after being released on bail last month.
NICARAGUA
Drug traffickers repatriated
Eighteen people — convicted on drug-trafficking charges after posing as TV journalists while entering the country with US$9.2 million — were repatriated to Mexico on Monday. Police transported the defendants, including a Mexican policeman, under tight security to Managua’s International Airport, where authorities turned them over to Mexican prosecutors and prison officials. In January, a Nicaraguan judge sentenced the 18, led by the group’s only woman, Raquel Alatorre Correa, to 30-year sentences for drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime. In October, an appeals court reduced the sentences to 18 years. The group was detained in August last year, when they crossed the Nicaragua-Honduras border carrying US$9.2 million in six vehicles with logos from Televisa, Mexico’s largest broadcaster. Televisa denied any connection to the incident. Three other Mexican citizens sentenced in Nicaragua for drug trafficking were also repatriated.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
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