CHINA
Two convicts executed
Two men convicted of committing deadly attacks that killed dozens in November have been executed, state media reported yesterday. Fan Weiqiu (樊維秋), 62, who on Nov. 11 rammed his car into a crowd outside a sports stadium in the southern city of Zhuhai, killing at least 35 people, was executed yesterday. The attack was the country’s deadliest in over a decade, authorities said. Police said Fan was upset over his divorce settlement. On Nov. 16, 21-year-old Xu Jiajin (徐加金) killed eight people and injured 17 in a stabbing attack at his vocational school in the eastern city of Wuxi. Police said Wu had failed his examinations and could not graduate, and was dissatisfied about his pay at an internship. He was also executed yesterday, state broadcaster CCTV said.
THAILAND
1.6 tonnes of meth seized
Thai authorities intercepted 1.65 tonnes of crystal methamphetamine in a record seizure of the illegal drug, senior narcotic officials said yesterday. The haul, which authorities said had been sent from Africa via India and was bound for Europe, the US or Australia, was found at a warehouse in Bangkok following a tip-off. Four men were arrested at the scene. At the warehouse, authorities found the crystal meth hidden in cotton rolls, Narcotic Control Board Secretary-General Phanurat Lukboon said. Officials declined to say how much the haul was worth, but a one-tonne seizure of crystal meth in May last year was valued at US$25 million.
AFGHANISTAN
Open girls’ schools: official
The Taliban’s acting deputy foreign minister called on the senior leadership to open schools for girls, among the strongest public rebukes of a policy that has contributed to the international isolation of its rulers. Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, who previously led a team of negotiators at the Taliban’s political office in Doha before US forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, said in a speech at the weekend that restrictions on girls and women’s education was not in line with Islamic Shariah law. “We request the leaders of the Islamic Emirate to open the doors of education,” he said, according to local broadcaster Tolo, referring to the Taliban’s name for its administration. “In the time of the Prophet Mohammed, the doors of knowledge were open to both men and women,” he said. “Today, out of a population of 40 million, we are committing injustice against 20 million people,” he added, referring to the nation’s female population.
RUSSIA
Soldiers allegedly beaten
A regional government has opened an investigation after video footage was published on social media showing what appear to be a military policeman savagely beating contract soldiers bound for Ukraine with a baton and using stun guns against them. In the videos, a man in Russian military police uniform is shown walking over to one of the soldiers and beating him to the ground with a baton while screaming expletives at him and stunning him with an electric shock gun. Another soldier with a walking stick is then shown being beaten and stunned with the gun as the man in military police uniform demands they undress. The time stamp on the video, which was distributed on Telegram by Russian war correspondents, is Jan. 16. Local authorities said the events occurred at a unit in Kyzyl, in the southern Siberian region of Tuva. Tuva’s regional government said in a statement on its Web site that an investigation had been opened after the videos appeared.
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
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency