■HONG KONG
Man with gold toilet dies
A jewelry tycoon famed for creating the world’s most expensive toilet died suddenly at home, the South China Morning Post said yesterday. Lam Sai-wing, 53, the creator of a HK$38 million (US$4.9 million) gold toilet listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, was found dead on Friday in his luxury apartment on Bowen Road, the newspaper reported. Thousands of people visit his company’s showroom every week to see the solid-gold toilet, which sits in a garish bathroom with gold fittings, including a gold toilet brush holder. The self-made millionaire who moved from China at 22 was inspired to build the toilet by his boyhood hero, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who said gold should be used to make toilets after the victory of socialism to remind people of capitalist waste.
■CHINA
Dissident’s health poor
Dissident Hu Jia (胡佳) is in poor health and he is not being allowed to communicate freely with his family, said a source who met him recently. Hu was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power” in April for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. He is serving a three-and-a-half year sentence in a prison in Tianjin and has been mentioned as a potential winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. A source close to the activist who asked not to be identified and who was allowed to see Hu last week, said that although he was apparently not being beaten, Hu had been placed in solitary confinement in chains at least once. “Because Hu Jia spread discussion of human rights among prisoners that was not beneficial to the management of the jail, he was placed in solitary confinement for a day on Aug. 13, shut in a cell for 24 hours in handcuffs and leg chains,” the source said. As Hu is a devout Buddhist, he sticks to a strict vegetarian diet, which is causing nutritional problems for him in jail, the source said.
■MALAYSIA
Molotov cocktail thrown
A Molotov cocktail was thrown into the home of opposition politician Teresa Kok but did not cause any injuries or damages, Kok said in a statement yesterday. Kok, who was recently released after a week-long detention under the tough Internal Security Act said, a piece of paper with a warning message was also flung into the compound of her family home in Kuala Lumpur. Kok said she was called a “pig” in the message and warned to “stay out of trouble or you and your family will be burned.”
■CHINA
Paper tiger goes on trial
A farmer who claimed to have taken photos of a rare tiger went on trial yesterday for faking the pictures, Xinhua news agency said. Zhou Zhenglong was being tried for fraud in the Xunyang County People’s Court in Shaanxi Province, Xinhua said. Zhou, aged 54, had reportedly hoped to collect a reward of more than 1 million yuan (about US$146,000) for finding a South China tiger in the wild. He received 20,000 yuan from the provincial forestry department after providing digital photos of a tiger among some trees, but the photos were quickly discovered to be fakes.
■FRANCE
Pope’s platter stolen
A ceremonial platter used by Pope Benedict XVI to celebrate a mass for the sick in Lourdes this month was stolen just moments afterwards, the French Catholic sanctuary said on Friday. The vermeil platter was part of a set of objects first used by the Bishop of Tarbes in the mid-18th century, at the time when the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes to a French peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous. The pope was in the southwestern shrine on Sept. 13 to Sept. 15 to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparitions, and the objects were lent specially to Lourdes by a nearby monastery for the occasion. It was the second time an object was stolen during a papal visit to Lourdes. In 2004, a thief made off with an altar cloth used by John Paul II.
■IRAN
EU worried over persecution
The EU on Friday expressed concern over Iran’s plans to introduce the death penalty for apostasy. Converts to Christianity in the Islamic state were already being detained, the presidency of the 27-member bloc said in Paris. The followers of minority religious groups such as Christians and Sufi or Sunni Muslims were increasingly being persecuted, with their property confiscated and places of worship desecrated. The EU agreed on Friday that Iran’s adoption of a law on apostasy would be a grave violation of religious freedom and contrary to Article 18 of the International Convention on Human Rights, the EU presidency said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Swiss flies ‘like a bird’
A Swiss adventurer flew into the record books on Friday by crossing from France to Britain on only a jet-powered wing, describing afterwards how he felt “like a bird” over the English Channel. Yves Rossy, 49, touched down in a field on top of the white cliffs of Dover after completing the 35km journey over one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. “I have proved it is possible to fly like a bird,” he said with a big grin, adding: “My aim [was] to realize the dream. You have an idea in your head, and to actually achieve it is the most gratifying thing you can do.” Asked how he felt while up in the air, he joked: “It’s a mixture of ecstasy and trying to stay concentrated — because I was thinking, the water is pretty cold down there.”
■GERMANY
Two terror suspects nabbed
Armed police boarded a plane minutes before takeoff and arrested a pair of ethnic Somalis, who they say wrote a suicide note proclaiming their desire to fight in a holy war and die in a terrorist attack. A 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German born in Somalia were removed from KLM flight to Amsterdam after Friday’s early morning raid at Cologne-Bonn Airport, police said. Authorities said they did not think the men planned to hijack the plane. An airport spokesman said the pair were unarmed. German media, citing unidentified sources, reported that their final destination was Pakistan, likely a terrorist training camp in the border region with Afghanistan.
■ITALY
Renoir nude recovered
Police on Friday recovered a stolen oil painting of a naked woman by French master Pierre-Auguste Renoir, nabbed from a private collection 33 years ago, and arrested three suspects. They were acting on a tip-off from a prominent art critic, Vittorio Sgarbi, who had been contacted by an art gallery owner in the Italian city of Riccione for a valuation of the Impressionist master’s work. Police arrested the gallery owner and two suspects.
■UNITED STATES
Grandpa told he’s pregnant
A patient treated for agonizing abdominal pain received this surprising news in his hospital paperwork: “Based on your visit today, we know you are pregnant.” The 71-year-old, John Grady Pippen, was more than surprised. The staff at Curry General Hospital in Gold Beach, Oregon, gave the retired mechanic and logger the happy news this month, along with some pain pills. Hospital administrator William McMillan said an errant keystroke caused the hospital’s computer to spit out the wrong discharge instructions for the grandfather.
■UNITED STATES
Hurricane brewing
Tropical Storm Kyle is approaching hurricane strength as it chugs north in the open Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center said Kyle’s top sustained winds were almost 113kph. Forecasters said the storm would likely become a hurricane yesterday, with winds of at least 119kph. A tropical storm warning was in effect for Bermuda. At 2am Kyle was centered about 515km west-southwest of Bermuda and moving north.
■UNITED STATES
Canadian faces extradition
A Toronto man suspected of killing a Californian woman in 1984 may be extradited to to face a murder charge. A Superior Court justice from Ontario ruled on Friday that DNA evidence linked Gerald Su Go to the murder, the Orange County Register reported. He has 30 days to appeal. Huntington Beach, California, police detective Mike Reilly reopened the case of Elizabeth Hoffschneider in 2004 after finding three hairs with DNA that allegedly matched a sample taken from Go. Go is charged in Orange County with raping and strangling Hoffschneider in November 1984 in her apartment. Go was convicted in 1986 of assault and attempted rape in Costa Mesa, but fled California before his sentencing. He was caught in New York in 2004, extradited to California to serve his sentence and was deported to Canada.
■VENEZUELA
Rebel monument unveiled
Members of an extreme leftist social and political organization unveiled a monument to late Colombian rebel leader Manuel Marulanda on Friday, as dozens of onlookers chanted rebel slogans and burned a US flag. The national chapter of the Continental Bolivarian Coordinator — with support from the Communist Party — led the effort to erect the monument. Organizers said President Hugo Chavez’s administration played no role in displaying the roughly 50cm bust of Marulanda. Mounted on an eye-level pedestal, it gazes out over the ramshackle houses in Caracas’ 23 de Enero slum, one of the country’s poorest. But Freddy Bernal — a close Chavez ally and mayor of a Caracas municipality — attended the ceremony, even as Colombia voiced its indignation.
■UNITED STATES
PRC woman sentenced
A Chinese woman has been sentenced in Los Angeles to a year in federal prison for trying to export military equipment to China. Qing Li fought tears as she pleaded with a judge on Friday to spare her time in prison. She said she deeply regretted her crime. US District Judge Jeffrey Miller said he sought to provide a deterrent. Still, his sentence involved less prison time than the 33 months sought by prosecutors. The maximum penalty was five years in prison. Li pleaded guilty to seeking to buy military equipment commonly used to gauge the power of nuclear explosions and to export them to China.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
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