■ CHINA
Drug regulator goes on trial
The country's disgraced former top drug regulator went on trial yesterday accused of taking bribes to approve untested medicine, a court official said, in a case highlighting the safety problems in the country's drug and food chains. An official of the press office of the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court, who would give only his surname Wang, confirmed that the trial of Zheng Xiaoyu (鄭筱萸), former director of the State Food and Drug Administration, had started. The trial comes as China's international image for food and drug safety has been tarnished with allegations that tainted ingredients from Chinese companies ended up in products blamed for deaths in Panama and for killing pets in the US.
■ CHINA
Court denies using feng shui
A court in Guangdong Province, where several corrupt judges have been arrested, has denied hiring a feng shui master to change its luck, a state-run newspaper said on Tuesday. The China Daily quoted an official from the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court as saying there was no truth to the allegation even though there has been some remodeling at the court. Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of trying to place things to achieve harmony with the environment. It is common for businesses and households to change furniture and even placements of doors according to feng shui principles to overcome bad luck.
■ MYANMAR
Toys linked to bombs
The country banned the sale of remote-controlled children's toys because of fears they could be turned into detonators for bombs, a local weekly journal reported on Tuesday. Toys such as model motor cars, planes and robots have been banned in Yangon since the first week of May, the Weekly Eleven journal said, quoting shop owners in the commercial capital. The toys in question were mostly imported from neighboring countries, the paper said, and the authorities would take action against anyone selling them.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Cult leader arrested
A cult leader accused of raping his female followers has been arrested in China and will face extradition, the justice ministry said yesterday. Jeong Myeong-seok, 62, set up a cult known as JMS after his initials. He fled South Korea in 1999, a day after rape allegations against him were aired on national television, Yonhap news agency said. Jeong was formally charged with rape in 2001 and arrested in Hong Kong in 2003 on visa violations. He fled an extradition hearing but was detained by Chinese authorities early this month. Former cult members, mostly young girls, have told police they were told to undress for a "health check" and to have sex with him to wipe out their sins.
■ MYANMAR
Suu Kyi supporters detained
Authorities briefly held 15 supporters of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday, bringing the number rounded up in just two days to 55, activists said. The crackdown comes ahead of a May 27 review of her house arrest, which is expected to be extended further by the military-run state. Myo Min Soe, a youth member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, said he and 14 others were arrested yesterday morning as they left a pagoda after praying for the release of the democracy icon. Forty people who were arrested at two different locations in Yangon remain in detention, an activist said.
■ TURKEY
Small airplane crashes
Two men, a Briton and a Pakistani, were killed when their small private aircraft crashed in a mountainous region of eastern Turkey, the state Anatolian news agency said on Tuesday. Quoting the local governor, the agency said search teams had found the wreckage of the aircraft and the bodies of the two men in a remote area of Trabzon province in northeast Turkey. On its Web site, the agency showed a picture of the aircraft, a Sky Arrow 65OT, jutting out of a heavily wooded hillside. The plane had taken off from the Black Sea city of Trabzon on Monday bound for Iran but had disappeared from radar screens.
■ RUSSIA
Gay activists to ignore ban
Gay rights activists vowed on Tuesday to ignore an imminent ban by Moscow city authorities on a gay pride parade later this month. Police arrived shortly before the start of a news conference saying they wanted to stay and listen, parade organizer Nikolai Alexeyev said. The meeting was also disrupted by a homophobic tirade by a journalist who compared homosexuals to pedophiles and a second who quoted the Bible and said Russia shouldn't imitate Western values. "Why should we?" he bellowed.
■ ITALY
Bus hijack bid fails
An attempt by three men to hijack a bus on Tuesday left one of the men and a trainee policeman who was on board at the time injured, Ansa news agency said. The three men, armed with a pistol and knives, tried to hijack the bus, near the northern city of Genoa. It was carrying about 15 passengers at the time. When the driver refused to obey, one of them fired a shot in the air but then released all the passengers before setting the bus ablaze. Two of the hijackers were arrested but a third fled, police said. One of two trainee policemen who were on the bus sustained minor injuries after he was stabbed by one of the hijackers. The man who threatened the driver was also slightly injured and was taken to hospital for treatment, Ansa reported.
■ NIGERIA
Tragedy strikes Goodluck
Unknown attackers destroyed the country home of the vice president-elect, Goodluck Jonathan, with dynamite yesterday and blew up a nearby police station, killing one officer, officials said. The attacks came before dawn in oil-rich southern Bayelsa state, where Jonathan is currently governor, said the region's police chief, Julian Okpalake. He said there were no immediate reports of casualties in the attack on Jonathan's home, which is not his primary residence. Official results from the April 21 presidential elections showed the ruling party candidates, Jonathan and president-elect Umaru Yar'Adua, the landslide winners.
■ SPAIN
House comes with mummy
A man making his first visit to a home he bought in a foreclosure auction found the former owner's mummified body sitting on the living room couch, police said on Tuesday. Coroners estimate the woman's remains had been there since 2001, when she stopped making payments on the house in the coastal town of Roses in the northeast Catalonia region. The body mummified rather than rotted in part because of the salty seaside air in Roses, a Catalan police official said.
■ UNITED STATES
Baby gets gun permit
Bubba Ludwig cannot walk, talk or open the refrigerator door — but he does have his very own Illinois gun permit. The 10-month-old, whose given name is Howard David Ludwig, was issued a firearm owner's identification card after his father, Howard Ludwig, paid the US$5 fee and filled out the application, not expecting to actually get one. The card lists the baby's height (68.6cm), weight (9kg) and has a scribble where the signature should be. With some exceptions, the cards are required of any Illinois residents purchasing or possessing firearms or ammunition within the state. There are no age restrictions on the cards, an official said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Thatcher opens exhibition
Margaret Thatcher, Britain's prime minister during the Falklands War, yesterday opened an exhibition on the 1982 conflict at the Imperial War Museum in London. The nine-month display marks the 25th anniversary of the conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. General Sir Jeremy Moore, who commanded British land forces and accepted the Argentine surrender, and Rex Hunt, the islands' governor at the time, were present at the opening. Thatcher, 81, whose health has declined markedly in recent years, was helped up the museum steps but walked into the hallway alone clutching her trademark handbag.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Bombing suspects freed
The widow of the alleged ringleader of the 2005 London bombings and two men were freed without charge on Tuesday after being questioned by police investigating the attacks, officials said. Hasina Patel, 29, wife of Mohammed Sidique Khan — the head of the group which struck three subway cars and a double-decker bus — was arrested on May 9 along with three men. Police said three suspects had been released after questioning, but said officers continue to interview a 34-year-old man on suspicion of aiding the bombers, who killed 52 commuters and injured hundreds in attacks on July 7, 2005.
■ UNITED STATES
Boys hold up store
Two adolescent boys are accused of wielding a concealed weapon — a squirt gun wrapped in black electrical tape — to steal cash from a discount store in Leavenworth, Texas. The purple plastic toy was recovered from the downtown Dollar General store by officers who caught the suspects, ages 11 and 14, within minutes of the holdup, police said on Tuesday. "It's very troubling that a kid that is 11 years old can formulate the thought in their mind to do something like this," police Major Pat Kitchens said. No one was injured in the holdup on Monday afternoon. Kitchens said the boys are suspected of walking into the store and displaying the weapon while demanding cash.
■ MEXICO
Gift-wrapped corpse found
Suspected drug gang hitmen killed a man in the seedy northern border city of Tijuana and wrapped him in Christmas gift-wrap in one of the more unusual of the country's daily rash of murders. The victim, in his 40s but not yet identified, was found dumped in a patch of wasteland on Sunday, bundled up in bedsheets. Police unwrapped the sheets to find he had been taped up in festive wrapping paper with a Christmas tree motif. The man's eyes were taped over and his body showed two bullet wounds and signs of torture and strangulation.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
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