JORDAN
King endorses media law
King Abdullah II has endorsed controversial amendments to a press and publication law seen by online journalists as a threat to freedom of expression. The king on Monday night issued a decree approving the law in its new form, after parliament passed the amendments that require the country’s 220 news Web sites to obtain licences from the government, which can censor content and hold journalists liable for posted comments. The amendments also stipulate that Web site chief editors must be members of the Jordan Press Association. Journalists and rights activists had urged the king to reject the law. “We refuse to be terrorized,” read a banner carried by journalists during a sit-in on Saturday.
UNITED STATES
Rushdie dismisses threat
Author Salman Rushdie is dismissing the latest threat against his life as just talk. The author of the novel The Satanic Verses says the threat “was essentially one priest in Iran looking for a headline.” Rushdie spoke on Tuesday to about 400 people at a New York Barnes & Noble book store about his newly published memoir, Joseph Anton. The memoir tells of his years in hiding after Iran’s now deceased leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 declared The Satanic Verses blasphemous and called for his death. A semi-official Iranian religious foundation headed by Ayatollah Hassan Saneii has raised the bounty for Rushdie from US$2.8 million to US$3.3 million after recent protests against an anti-Islamic film.
UNITED STATES
System failing black males
More than half the young black men who graduated from high schools in 2010 earned their diploma in four years, an improved graduation rate that still lagged behind that of their white counterparts, according to an education group’s report released yesterday. The Schott Foundation for Public Education, which has tracked graduation rates of black males from US public schools since 2004, said 52 percent of black males who entered high school in the 2006 to 2007 school year graduated in four years. That compared with 78 percent of white, non-Latino males and 58 percent of Latino males.
Venezuela
Group decry use of song
The pop group Los Amigos Invisibles says it is the latest victim of socialist President Hugo Chavez’s wave of expropriations. Local media say the band is demanding a state-owned radio station yank a publicity spot remixing its song Majunche as a re-election campaign plug for Chavez, who is known for his frequent and often uncompensated nationalizations of businesses. The 2004 tune is mostly an instrumental jam in which the singers occasionally shout majunche, which roughly translates as “loser.” Chavez, up for re-election on Oct. 7, uses the epithet to describe opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
UNITED STATES
Burger poll beefs up election
With burgers as ballots, a restaurant in the capital is conducting its own gourmet straw poll in the run-up to national elections on Nov. 6. BLT Steak is giving patrons a choice of hamburgers named after President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan. Voting ends on Oct. 2, just over a month before polling day. The Obama burger is the most expensive at US$28 because “he’s the president” and deserves the best, manager Adam Sanders said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
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