CHINA
Agreement on sea disputes
Vietnam has agreed to jointly “address and control” maritime disputes, state media said yesterday, as differences over the South China Sea have roiled relations between the two countries and other neighbors, including Taiwan, which also claims islands in the waters. The two countries should “properly address and control maritime differences” to create favorable conditions for bilateral cooperation, Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) told Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Thursday on the sidelines of an Asia-Europe Meeting in Milan. Xinhua news agency said Dung agreed and endorsed boosting “cooperation in infrastructure, finance and maritime exploration.”
CHINA
Rail designer sentenced
The rail engineer credited with designing the country’s high-speed rail network received a suspended death sentence after a Beijing court found him guilty of taking 47.6 million yuan (US$7.8 million) in bribes, state media reported yesterday. Zhang Shuguang (張曙光), former deputy chief engineer and transportation bureau head of China’s now-defunct Ministry of Railways, was charged in September last year for accepting bribes mostly from private firms vying to win contracts over an 11-year period. Zhang was given a death sentence suspended for two years, Xinhua news agency said. Zhang’s deputy at the transport bureau, Su Shunhu (蘇順虎), was sentenced separately yesterday by a Beijing court to life in prison for taking 24 million yuan in bribes, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.
INDIA
Farmer burns boy to death
A low-caste teenage boy was burnt to death in eastern India for letting his goat stray into paddy fields belonging to a high-caste farmer, police said on Thursday. Police arrested the farmer thought responsible for the attack on the 15-year-old, whose Mahadalit caste is the lowest in India’s still deeply entrenched hereditary social system. The boy, Sai Ram, was attacked on Wednesday night in the Rohtas district of Bihar. “Ram was first badly beaten by [the] accused and later set on fire. He was declared dead when brought to a local government hospital,” Rohtas superintendent of police Chandan Kushwaha said.
AUSTRALIA
Spider lives in stomach
A man had a spider removed from his stomach after it burrowed its way into his body. Dylan Maxwell was on holiday on the Indonesian island of Bali when the spider burrowed through an appendix scar and traveled up his torso, leaving a red scar-like trail from his navel to his chest. “Well after running tests and putting things inside my stomach they finally found out it was a tropical spider that’s been living inside me for the last three days,” he said on Facebook.
SYRIA
Airstrikes slow militants: US
Two days of heavy airstrikes by US warplanes have slowed an advance by Islamic State militants against Kurdish forces defending the Syrian border town of Kobane. Turkish and US officials said last week that fighters from the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were on the verge of taking Kobane from its heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders, after seizing strategic points deep inside the town. The tempo of coalition air strikes has increased dramatically, with US fighter and bomber planes carrying out 14 raids against militant targets near Kobane on Wednesday and Thursday, the US military’s Central Command said.
UNITED STATES
Body thought to be Upham’s
Police on Thursday found a body feared to be that of US actress Misty Upham, who appeared in Django Unchained and last year’s August: Osage County, officials said. The body was found at the bottom of an embankment in a Seattle suburb by a family member searching for the 32-year-old actress, whose movie credits also include 2008’s Frozen River. Upham had been reported missing on Oct. 6, according to industry journal Variety. “The body was recovered by a member of Misty Upham’s family who was in the area searching for her,” a statement by the Auburn Police Department said. “A purse containing identification of Misty Upham was at the scene, however, at this time the medical examiner has not made a positive identification nor a determination of cause of death.” According to Variety, Upham’s family reportedly told police that she had been suicidal a day before her disappearance.
BRAZIL
Serial killing suspect held
Police on Thursday said they have arrested a suspected serial killer who admits to slaying 39 people in a four-year killing spree. “He was arrested on Tuesday night after a 70-day investigation and on Wednesday admitted to slaying 39 people since 2011, including 16 women, homosexuals and homeless people,” a police spokesman from Goias state said. He said the suspect, 26-year-old security guard Thiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha, was arrested in the city of Goiania, adding that he had earlier on Thursday slit his wrists after smashing the light bulb in his cell. Police said he has told them he did not know his victims and acted out of an inner “fury he felt against everything,” which only subsided when committing murder. After the slayings, he would feel remorse which only fueled his anger and led him to kill again, they added.
UNITED KINGDOM
Texts from the grave?
A British family were shocked to receive a text message apparently from their dead grandmother, who had been buried with her cellphone three years earlier. Lesley Emerson died aged 59 in 2011 and was buried with some of her favorite things, including her mobile phone. Her granddaughter Sheri Emerson, 22, said she found comfort in sending messages to her grandmother’s number. Sheri Emerson was stunned last week to get a reply reading “I’m watching over you,” she said. “I felt sick when I read it,” she told the Shields Gazette. “I was in shock and didn’t know what to think.” Her uncle called the number and it emerged it was being used by a man who believed the texts from Sheri Emerson were joke messages from friends. The new user — and the telecom O2 that reassigned the number — have apologized.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
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