CHINA
Rural harmony index begins
The government has released its first-ever “rural social harmony index,” state media reported yesterday, with the gauge apparently able to measure happiness down to the nearest ten-thousandth of a decimal point. The index shows that social harmony in the countryside at 59.2526 on a 100-point scale, Xinhua news agency said, citing a report by the Center for Chinese Rural Studies at Central China Normal University. The measurement was based on six criteria related to the Communist Party’s definition of a “harmonious society,” Xinhua said, including “democracy, justice, honesty, vitality, stability and harmony between humans and nature.” The study found that rural areas ranked highest in the area of honesty (83.65), but lower in achieving harmony between humans and nature (50.74), the agency said. The notion of a harmonious society was introduced by former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as a call for a unified nation pulling together, but the slogan has been tarnished in recent years by persistent social turmoil and outbreaks of violent unrest over a wide range of issues, including corruption, police brutality and unpaid wages.
INDONESIA
Vimeo banned over ‘porn’
The government has ordered a ban on popular video-sharing Web site Vimeo after accusing it of hosting pornographic content, sparking social media fury yesterday. The Ministry of Communications announced on Monday that the US-based site would be blocked following the discovery of Vimeo pages with names such as “Art of Nakedness” and “Nudie Cutie,” featuring naked and scantily clad women. The ministry is headed by Minister of Communications Tifatul Sembiring, who has waged a campaign against illicit material on the Internet. It said that Vimeo had been added to a list of 119 other sites banned over content deemed pornographic. Vimeo said on Twitter that the site was “blocked for some Indonesian users, but it’s on the Indonesian side and we can’t unblock it.” Social media users reacted furiously to the news that the site was being blocked. “It’s insane... The world will laugh at Indonesia for considering Vimeo a pornographic site,” Savic Ali said on Twitter.
JORDAN
Diplomat held in Libya freed
Ambassador to Libya Fawaz Aitan has been freed a month after masked gunmen kidnapped him in Tripoli and returned home yesterday. Aitan’s release came days after Tripoli said it had ratified an extradition agreement with Amman. There was no claim of responsibility for the abduction, but Libyan sources say the abductors were demanding the release of a Libyan jihadist jailed in Jordan for more than seven years. Mohammed Saeed al-Darsi was tried and convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison in 2007. He was found guilty of possessing explosives and planning an attack on Amman’s international airport. Aitan was handed over to the Jordanian authorities in Libya at 3am, Jordanian Parliamentary Minister of Affairs Khaled al-Kalaldah told reporters. “Last week, [al-]Darsi was handed over to Libyan authorities in line with the [extradition] agreement so that he will spend the rest of his sentence in Libyan jails,” al-Kalaldah said. Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Judeh said on local state TV that Aitan was “doing well” following his release. Upon landing at Marka military airport in Amman, the ambassador was greeted by relatives and officials led by Prince Faisal bin Hussein, the brother of King Abdullah II, state news agency Petra said.
CANADA
Railway crash charges laid
Authorities on Monday charged Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway Ltd (MM&A) and three employees with criminal negligence following the train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people last year. Thomas Harding, Jean Demaitre, Richard Labrie and the company itself were charged with 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death, public prosecutor’s office spokesman Rene Verret said. He said Harding was the train driver, while Labrie was a controller at MM&A and Demaitre was director of operations. Verret said the three were placed under arrest on Monday and would appear in court yesterday afternoon in Lac-Megantic. The derailment occurred after Harding parked his train for the night on a main line uphill from the small town. The train of oil tankers started rolling and eventually derailed, exploding into balls of fire and flattening the center of the town. US-based MM&A initially blamed the catastrophe on the failure of the train’s pneumatic air brakes after an engine fire, but chairman Edward Burkhardt later said the train’s engineer did not apply an adequate number of handbrakes to hold the train in place.
MEXICO
Zetas founder killed
A most-wanted founder of the ultra-violent Zetas drug cartel has been killed in a clash with the military that involved grenades and assault rifles, authorities said on Monday. Galdino Mellado Cruz, a military deserter known by the alias Z-9, was killed in one of two gunfights in the northern border city of Reynosa on Friday that also left five civilians and a soldier dead. The skirmish came amid a surge in violence in Tamaulipas State that has left more than 80 people dead since April 5, including the state police’s chief of investigations. Intelligence work led the troops to a house in Reynosa where Mellado was hiding, national security commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said. Grenades were lobbed from the house and shots fired at the soldiers. Several carloads of gunmen arrived at the scene with assault rifles, apparently to help Mellado. When the clash ended, Mellado was found dead inside the house next to a submachine gun, Rubido said.
VENEZUELA
Leprosy vaccine maker dies
Scientist and doctor Jacinto Convit, renowned for developing a vaccine against leprosy, died on Monday in Caracas at the age of 100, his family said. Convit won many international honors, including Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award and France’s Legion of Honor, and was tipped for the 1988 Nobel Prize for Medicine, although he did not win. Convit also made significant contributions to a better understanding of infectious and parasitic diseases such as Leishmaniasis and Chagas. In the past 15 years, he devoted much of his time looking for a cure for cancer.
UNITEDS STATES
Boy in court over killing
A 13-year-old Colorado boy suspected of shooting his father dead and concealing the killing for days by calling the man’s work to say his dad was sick made his first court appearance on Monday as prosecutors weighed whether to charge him as an adult. Kai Kelly was arrested last week on suspicion of first-degree murder in the death of his father, Joseph Kelly, in the small town of Gypsum. Jill Sarmo, spokeswoman for the Eagle County District Attorney’s Office, said the boy was appointed a public defender on Monday and will be formally charged at a later date.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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