CHINA
Trial held to teach public
A court in Sichuan Province’s Langzhong City on Wednesday held an outdoor trial for eight migrant workers protesting against unpaid wages to “educate the public in law,” the state-run Beijing News reported yesterday. Chinese courts occasionally hold public trials involving criminal offenses, such as drug dealing and robbery, but such trials for labor offenses are rare. The workers were charged with obstructing police during a protest they staged last year to claim unpaid wages from their employer, a developer, the paper said. The eight were sentenced to between six and eight months in prison.
AUSTRALIA
‘Koala’ diplomacy slammed
The opposition Labor Party on Thursday launched a “Waste-pedia” booklet and Waste Watch Web site, accusing the government of over-lavish spending — including A$400,000 (US$305,154) on “koala and other marsupial-related events.” “This government is obsessed with hugging koalas. We’ve had A$400,000, which included [Foreign Minister] Julie Bishop paying A$133,000 to fly four koalas to Singapore Zoo,” opposition MP Pat Conroy said outside parliament. “She spent I think it was A$130,000 taking diplomats to Western Australia where they hugged wombats for a change — so at least they changed up the marsupial.” It was not immediately clear how the figures were reached.
ROMANIA
Village thanks Snoop Dogg
A small village in Transylvania is reveling in the virtual attention caused by a spelling mistake by US rapper Snoop Dogg. Posting a selfie on Instagram, the rapper, who has been on tour in Bogota, Colombia, told his fans he was in Bogata. Romanians soon spotted the mistake and began posting about it. A tourist Web site, visitbogata.com, also popped up, describing the village of 2,000 as the “best place for chillin’ in Romania.” There is no hotel in the village, so visitors are advised to bring a sleeping bag. If they get hungry they can feast on a twist of the famous Hungarian goulash. “It was a mistake, but it’s a good advert for us,” Bogata Mayor Laszlo Barta said yesterday.
KENYA
Escaped lion injures man
A lion strayed from a national park on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, mauling a 63-year-old man, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said. The man was hospitalized after the attack early yesterday on Mombasa Road and is now out of danger, spokesman Paul Udoto said by phone. Three KWS teams have “sighted the lion and are driving it back, deeper into the park,” he said. The incident comes about a month after six lions strayed from Nairobi National Park, sparking a similar search mission. The park is home to between 30 and 40 lions, Udoto said.
UNITED STATES
Ashton Carter criticizes Iran
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said on Thursday that Iran might have violated international law when it seized 10 US sailors in the Persian Gulf in January. “Iran’s actions were outrageous, unprofessional and inconsistent with international law,” Carter said in a testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The sailors were detained after veering off course into Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island, the home of an Iranian navy base, and were freed after about 14 hours. Video footage released by the Iranian government showed the sailors kneeling at gunpoint with their hands clasped behind their heads. At the time, Washington emphasized the sailors’ quick release, calling it a result of the diplomatic channels opened by the nuclear deal struck last year with Iran.
UNITED STATES
IS recruiter gets 22 years
A New York pizza shop owner who admitted he tried to recruit people for the Islamic State (IS) group has been sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. Mufid Elfgeeh was sentenced on Thursday. He pleaded guilty in December last year to attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Authorities said he tried to recruit three people to join the Islamic State to fight in Syria. He was operating a convenience store and pizza shop at the time.
GREECE
People traffickers arrested
Six suspected members of a trafficking network were arrested as they prepared to fly seven Iraqi migrants to Italy in a light aircraft, police said on Thursday. The gang of four were arrested in Messolonghi on Wednesday as a small Piper plane carrying the migrants, including four children, was about to take off. The migrants had been driven from Athens by the smugglers. “A criminal network was dismantled for illegally transferring the migrants from Greece to countries in western Europe on small aircraft,” police said in a statement. The network had successfully sent 12 groups of migrants to Italy, police said, adding that each passenger paid the smugglers between 4,500 and 7,500 euros (US$5,100 and US$8,500).
HAITI
Seven killed in tanker blast
At least seven people were killed and about 30 others seriously burned on Thursday in Haiti when a tanker truck belonging to the Total oil company caught fire and exploded. The accident took place in the town of Hinche, about 110km northeast of the capital Port-au-Prince. Witnesses said that the tanker hit a wall and spilled gasoline as it was getting in place to unload fuel at a Total service station. The flammable liquid spread and caught fire when it reached vendors cooking food on outdoor grills. The flames quickly returned to the tanker, which set off the explosion.
UNITED STATES
Chinese paper settles suit
The largest Chinese-language newspaper in the nation is to pay US$7.8 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it made reporters and others work up to 17 hours a day without overtime. The Chinese Daily News did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement, which was announced yesterday. Based in the Los Angeles, the paper has about 120,000 readers. Its employees, many of them Taiwanese, said they were expected to work long hours without rest, meal breaks or overtime pay.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump