CHINA
Jealous man slays nine
A fruit vendor in Hebei Province murdered his wife and eight others in a jealous rage because he feared she was cheating on him, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Qin Changcheng, 32, has been arrested and confessed to killing his wife, her boss, his aunt and uncle and six neighbors, Xinhua said, citing a statement from police in Hebei. The Oriental Morning Post, a Shanghai-based daily, said Qin carried out the killings on Monday, starting at a car wash in Botou City where his wife worked. He then moved on to a dormitory in the city of about 560,000 people, 200km north of Beijing, where he murdered the others. It was not clear how he carried out the killings.
PAKISTAN
Militant leader rearrested
Police have rearrested a militant leader who was released last month from jail after being in custody for 14 years. An aide to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi founder Malik Ishaq said he was picked up by police from his home late on Tuesday. Zainul Abideen said police were not charging Ishaq, but detaining him under a public order act. This means he can be kept for three months. Ishaq made several speeches that appeared to advocate violence against Shiite Muslims since his release on bail in July. Ishaq was accused in dozens of killings, including many of minority Shiites, but freed because the Supreme Court decided there was not enough evidence to keep holding him. His case never went to trial.
AUSTRALIA
Shark population falling
Sharks inhabiting the Great Barrier Reef are in decline because of overfishing, researchers said yesterday after developing what they said was a new way to measure falling numbers. Academics from James Cook University in Queensland said there was mounting evidence of widespread and substantial declines in shark populations around the world, with some species now listed as threatened. “Our consensus estimates are around 6 percent per year decline for whitetip reef sharks and 9 percent for gray reef sharks,” professor Sean Connolly said. Given the range of uncertainty around the estimates, the decline could potentially be even greater, he added.
HONG KONG
Grannies earn black belts
Too old to learn taekwondo? Not for a group of grandmothers who became black belts after demonstrating their kicking and punching prowess, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday. The seven women, aged 63 to 74, received the top ranking in the martial art after passing a test at the territory’s first taekwondo class for the elderly, the report said. The main challenge, the oldest woman in the group said, was not physical but mental as they had to memorize all the moves. The test included standard kicks and four pre-set patterns of attack and defensive movements.
AUSTRALIA
Columnist broke race law
Melbourne Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt was yesterday found guilty of breaching national race laws over articles arguing that fair-skinned Aborigines often said they were black for personal gain. Federal Court Judge Mordecai Bromberg ruled that some Aborigines were likely to have been “offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated” by Bolt’s articles, “It’s so hip to be black” and “White fellas in the black,” written in 2009. Bromberg said Bolt and his publisher, The Herald and Weekly Times, had contravened the nation’s Racial Discrimination Act. Bolt described the verdict as “a terrible day for free speech in this country.”
RUSSIA
Putin splits finance duties
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin split the duties of ousted finance minister Alexei Kudrin among two officials on Tuesday and called on ministers to show discipline until a new government is formed. Putin named Anton Siluanov, a low-profile bureaucrat who was Kudrin’s deputy, as acting finance minister and said First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov would take over Kudrin’s duties as deputy prime minister, overseeing the government’s financial issues. Explaining his choice of Siluanov, Putin told a government meeting: “He is a good specialist and his candidacy was obviously agreed with [President] Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev. This is our joint decision.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Moat inquest acquits cops
Inquest jurors on Tuesday cleared police of any wrongdoing in the death of fugitive gunman Raoul Moat, who shot himself after a six-hour standoff with officers on July 10. The jury concluded that the use of Tasers, which were only licensed for testing, had not caused 37-year-old Moat to kill himself by accident. Consultant neuropathologist Ian Schofield told the hearing that he did not believe there was definitive evidence to suggest the electrical impulse from the Taser shot had caused Moat’s hand to contract and involuntarily pull the trigger. After seven days on the run during which Moat shot and wounded his former girlfriend, killed her new partner and injured a police officer, armed police surrounded Moat in Rothbury in northeast England.
UKRAINE
Tymoshenko facing jail term
Prosecutors on Tuesday demanded a seven-year sentence for opposition leader and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in an abuse of power trial that has undermined Kiev’s budding relations with the EU. “We ask ... that a seven-year prison sentence be given,” chief prosecutor Liliya Frolova told the court as hundreds rallied outside the courtroom. The indictment was met by shouts of “Liar” and “Shame” from Tymoshenko’s supporters in the courtroom. Tymoshenko has dismissed the trial as a political vendetta launched by the new government.
ITALY
Ex-porn star to set up party
Flamboyant former porn star and former politician Cicciolina plans to set up a new political party as the antithesis to her country’s corrupt politics, according to excerpts from an interview published on Tuesday. “We want to set up an optimistic party of the future. Enough with these parties of profiteers, vote-selling, tenders and corruption,” the Hungarian-born Cicciolina — real name Ilona Staller — told Oggi magazine. “We’re thinking of a party of honest people — against the military and in favor of the rights of the weak,” said the 59-year-old, who became notorious for delivering campaign speeches with her breasts exposed. “I would go among the people to listen to their problems,” she said.
POLAND
Police find hidden art haul
Police said on Tuesday that they had found a haul of more than 200 missing artworks, including several Renaissance paintings, in the home of a 90-year-old man. Investigators believe the man, who lives in Szczecin, found the buried collection in the 1960s during building work. Antoni M, who under Polish law can only be identified by his first name and last initial, then constructed a purpose-built bunker to hide the artworks. The oldest painting in the cache dates from 1532, police said.
MEXICO
Heads found in Acapulco
Five decomposing human heads were found on Tuesday outside an elementary school in Acapulco, police said, in the latest example of grisly violence gripping the country. Someone placed a wooden box near the Benito Juarez school in the southern port city, and “on top of it was a white bag which contained five severed human heads inside,” a police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity. The discovery occurred in full view of young students and pedestrians, sparking fear in the area. Soldiers and police removed the remains and cordoned off the location.
UNITED STATES
Christie not running
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie hasn’t changed his mind: He reaffirmed on Tuesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, that he’s not running for president. Christie urged a capacity audience of about 900 to look at the Web site Politico, which had pieced together a long string of video clips of him saying he’s not a candidate for the White House. “Those are the answers,” he told the crowd. Christie later said he was flattered by suggestions in a question-and-answer session that he should run next year, but added “that reason has to reside inside me.”
CHILE
Students agree to talks
The country’s student federation on Tuesday agreed to talks with the government of President Sebastian Pinera on education reforms after nearly five months of demonstrations. However, student leaders said they would be calling for no classes to be held while the talks are ongoing, to maintain pressure on the government. Classes have been on hold in many schools and universities during the long-running protests, the largest protest movement in the country since General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship ended in 1990. After a sometimes raucous 10-hour meeting, representatives of 25 student federations from the main universities agreed to resume talks, but would also go ahead with a national strike today.
UNITED STATES
Muslim leader sentenced
The leader of the local branch of a defunct Islamic charity was on Tuesday sentenced to nearly three years in prison after being convicted of helping smuggle US$150,000 to Saudi Arabia. District Judge Michael Hogan said that while he has no doubt the money went to Islamic fighters battling the Russian army in Chechnya, as the prosecution maintained, there’s no proof directly linking Pete Seda to terrorism. For that reason, Hogan said he wouldn’t apply the so-called “terrorism enhancement” that could have sent Seda to prison for eight years.
BOLIVIA
Interior minister steps down
The interior minister and his deputy resigned on Tuesday after mounting recriminations over a violent police crackdown on marchers opposed to a jungle highway that they say would despoil an indigenous preserve. Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti became the second Cabinet member to step down over the weekend action, which backfired as angry crowds pressured police into releasing the hundreds of protesters they had detained. Defense Minister Cecilia Chacon resigned in protest immediately after Sunday’s crackdown by about 500 police officers who fired tear gas and wielded clubs in the eastern lowlands. The backlash is a major setback for President Evo Morales, who by stubbornly insisting on the 300km jungle highway had alienated many of his indigenous core supporters.
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
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,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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