■CHINA
Two detained over rapes
A former village head and his business partner have been detained in eastern China for the alleged rape of teenage girls who were forced into a prostitution ring, state press said yesterday. Investigators said at least 10 girls were raped in Zhejiang Province but locals said dozens of teenagers may have been violated by the attackers, who included businessmen, officials and civil servants, the China Daily said. Former village head He Guobing (何國兵) and the 40-year-old owner of a karaoke bar in Zhejiang’s Lishui prefecture, Chen Weijun (陳偉軍), have been detained and are awaiting trial, while more arrests are expected, the paper said. A 15-year-old girl, who allegedly accepted 5,000 yuan (US$730) to arrange the rapes of her classmates, has been detained and may face charges, it said. One girl was reportedly forced into a car and taken to be raped. The Lishui case came to light after a 13-year-old girl told her teacher she had been raped.
■MYANMAR
Comedian falls ill in jail
A popular comedian jailed by the military government for his political activism was briefly taken to hospital for examination after relatives said he was ill and being denied medical care. The sister-in-law of Zarganar, who is serving a 35-year sentence in Myitkyina prison in northernmost Kachin State, said yesterday he was taken to Myitkyina General Hospital late on Monday and had a medical checkup lasting about two hours that included an ultrasound, X-ray and EKG.. Like many people in Myanmar, Zarganar uses only one name. “The EKG results showed an enlarged heart, and he needs proper medical care,” said his sister-in-law Htway Htway, whose elder sister Ma Nyein spoke with doctors at the hospital in Myitkyina. Htway Htway said that Zarganar had fainted in his cell and remained unconscious for two hours on April 16 and had been denied a medical exam. She said yesterday she suspected he had suffered a heart attack.
■INDIA
Train accident kills four
Four people were killed and 11 injured yesterday in a bizarre train accident in southern India when unknown persons drove an empty train out of a station leading to a collision with a goods train, officials said. “The empty rake which was waiting at a suburban terminal near Chennai was removed by some unauthorized miscreants onto the sector track and it collided with a goods train coming from the opposite direction,” Southern Railways chief public relations officer Meenu Ittyerah said. The accident took place at the Vyasarpadi Jeeva station in the northwestern suburbs of Chennai. Ittyerah said four persons had been killed and 11, including two railway staff, were injured.
■SOUTH KOREA
Medical tourist law relaxed
Hospitals will be allowed to directly seek foreign patients from next month as part of South Korea’s efforts to become Asia’s new medical tourism hub, officials said on Tuesday. “We expect about 300 billion won [US$221 million] in revenue this year in this sector, which will grow fast thanks to our aggressive overseas marketing to be legalized this week,” said Lee Young-ho, a marketing director of the Global Healthcare Business Center. The center, which is controlled by the health ministry, is forming a network of hospitals and travel agencies that will be officially allowed to seek patients abroad under a law that takes effect tomorrow. Lee forecast that about 50,000 foreigners would visit the country for treatment this year compared with 27,480 last year.
■SPAIN
Pen was more than a pen
Police said on Tuesday they had arrested a doctor they suspect of using a pen camera to secretly film his female colleagues as they were undressing. He would place the pen in the pocket of his white coat, which he would then strategically place in a locker room of the clinic just before female employees came in to change, a police spokesman in the city of Seville said. The 25-year-old doctor was discovered by a colleague who noticed the unusual pen and later watched the images on it of women undressing. The colleague informed the police. The spokesman said the man was “a bit obsessed with a woman who worked at the clinic.”
■RUSSIA
Rare leopard in stolen car
The owner of a rare leopard said his car was stolen on Tuesday in St. Petersburg and that the thieves were in for a surprise. There is a baby leopard in the trunk. “My driver and I were in the process of settling the leopard in the trunk of my Mercedes ... when three masked assailants attacked us. They managed to get away with the car,” Mikhail Barakin said. Barakin is offering a reward of US$90,940 for the pet, an Asian Leopard Cat. “If someone returns the animal, I won’t press charges,” he said. Barakin, who heads a private TV station in St. Petersburg, said the animal was a gift. The leopard is worth about US$350,000, he estimated. The species is no bigger than an average house cat and only a few thousand remain.
■SOLOMON ISLANDS
Tutu to launch commission
Former Cape Town archbishop Desmond Tutu arrived in the Solomon Islands capital on Tuesday to launch a truth and reconciliation commission aimed at easing lingering ethnic tensions. More than 100 people died and an estimated 20,000 were displaced in the tensions that flared between 1997 and 2003 in the South Pacific archipelago. Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate, received a traditional welcome from dancing warriors at the airport. Prime Minister Derek Sikua said the commission would be key to achieving peace and unity. It is modeled on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which the 77-year-old Tutu headed.
■ITALY
Mobsters get life in prison
Sicilian mafia bosses Bernardo Provenzano and Toto Riina, already serving jail time, were given new life sentences on Tuesday over a 1969 massacre that left six mafia members dead, ANSA news agency reported. Provenzano, 76, and Riina, 78, were accused of being part of a commando that dressed up as police officers to kill their rivals in the office of a real estate firm, a shooting that was dubbed the “Viale Lazio Massacre,” ANSA said. A court in Palermo sentenced the two men, the only surviving members of the commando, to life in prison. Riina, nicknamed “The Beast,” has been sentenced to a total of 15 life sentences. Provenzano has been handed a dozen life sentences.
■IRAN
Reporter on hunger strike
Washington said on Tuesday it was “very concerned” about US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi, said to be on a hunger strike in a Tehran jail, and urged her release. “We’ll use every tool in our diplomatic arsenal to bring her back,” State Department Spokesman Robert Wood said. Saberi’s father, Reza Saberi, said in Tehran his daughter’s hunger strike had entered its second week. He said she had lost a lot of weight but would keep up her protest until her release.
■MEXICO
Senate eases drug law
The Senate approved a bill on Tuesday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of narcotics for personal use to free resources to fight violent drug cartels. The bill, proposed by conservative President Felipe Calderon, would make it legal to carry up to 5g of marijuana, 500mg of cocaine and tiny quantities of other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines. Congress passed a similar proposal in 2006, but the bill was vetoed by Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, under pressure from the US, which said it would increase drug abuse, but now is worried by the drug-related violence along its border. The bill, which needs to be approved by the lower house, also allows Mexican states to convict small-time drug dealers, no longer making it a federal crime to peddle drugs. Drug dealers are rarely convicted in Mexico as federal courts are saturated with bigger cases and local judges cannot interfere.
■UNITED STATES
Man clings to back of truck
A trucker hung on to the back of his trailerless semi-truck on Tuesday while a man who commandeered the vehicle led police on a 80km chase down an interstate in Georgia, authorities said. The semi eventually slowed enough for the trucker, Torrey Lang, 32, of Lithonia, Georgia, to leap off near the end of the chase. When Milo Banks, 27, stopped the semi, armed officers surrounded the truck’s cab, breaking through the windows before wrestling Banks to the ground, authorities said. Banks of Albany, Georgia, was in jail facing a charge of felony theft of a motor vehicle, and an initial court appearance was scheduled for yesterday morning.
■UNITED STATES
Jihad plotters get life
Three brothers were sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison for plotting to kill US soldiers in an assault on a military base in New Jersey, the justice department said. The ethnic Albanian men were convicted in a 12-week trial of plotting and training to conduct a jihadist-style attack on Fort Dix in New Jersey. Judge Robert Kugler in Camden, New Jersey, sentenced Dritan Duka, 30, Shain Duka, 28, and Eljvir Duka, 25, to life in prison without parole. Two more defendants were to be sentenced yesterday. The gang, which prosecutors said was inspired by jihadist attacks on troops, was arrested in May 2007 when two of the Duka brothers met a government informant to buy four automatic M-16 rifles and three AK-47 rifles. “The hatred and contempt these young men hold for America and the rule of law was made abundantly clear during the investigation, at trial and even today as they spoke at their sentencings,” prosecutor Ralph Marra said in a statement. “Not one word of contrition was heard from any of them.”
■UNITED STATES
Konami drops Iraq game
Japanese videogame maker Konami confirmed on Tuesday that it spiked plans to publish a videogame based on a fierce battle between US Marines and insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Six Days in Fallujah was made by Atomic Games studio and crafted with input from dozens of Marines in order to recreate the 2004 battle from the perspective of US forces on the ground. The first-person shooter game was billed as a “survival horror” title that follows a squad of US Marines fighting to wrest Fallujah from entrenched insurgents during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Konami had planned to release the videogame next year, but the title was condemned by some military veterans and families of people whose lives were lost during the fighting.
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,
RSS