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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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