THAILAND
Court rules against party
The Constitutional Court yesterday ruled the biggest party in parliament had contravened the constitution in seeking to change a law against insulting the monarchy, in what could set a precedent for any future review of one of the world’s strictest lese majeste laws. The Move Forward Party won last year’s election on a progressive platform that included a once unthinkable proposal to amend the law, which carries penalties of up to 15 years in jail for each perceived insult of the crown. The court ordered the party to abandon that plan, which it said was tantamount to an attempt to “overthrow the democratic regime of government with the king as a head of state.”
SOUTH KOREA
US pilot ejects before crash
A US Air Force pilot yesterday safely ejected from an F-16 jet that crashed into waters off the southwestern coast. The unidentified pilot was conscious and was transported to a medical facility for assessment, the US Eighth Fighter Wing said in a statement. It said it closely worked with US and South Korean mission partners to recover the pilot, who experienced an unspecified in-flight emergency and ejected before the plane crashed into the sea. The cause of the crash, which reportedly occurred in waters near the port city of Seosan, was being investigated.
CHINA
Couple executed for killings
The government yesterday executed a couple for throwing two young children out of the window of an apartment building, in a case that caused nationwide outrage. Zhang Bo (張波) and Ye Chengchen (葉誠塵) were previously found responsible for the fatal falls of the two-year-old girl and one-year-old boy from the 15th floor of a residential tower in Chongqing. Zhang, who was the father of the two children, had begun an affair with Ye, who was initially unaware he was married and had children. She then urged Zhang to kill his two children, which she “regarded as obstacles” to their getting married and a “burden on their future life together,” the Chongqing No. 5 Intermediate People’s Court said in a statement. In November 2020, Zhang threw his children out of the window of the apartment in the absence of their mother, with whom he had agreed to divorce.
AUSTRALIA
Sheep, cattle marooned
A ship carrying about 14,000 sheep and 2,000 cattle is marooned off the coast in sweltering heat after it was forced to abandon a trip through the Red Sea, causing an outcry from people concerned about the animals’ welfare. The vessel left on Jan. 5 for Israel, where it was to unload, but diverted from its course in the middle of last month due to the threat of attack by Yemen’s Houthi militia before being ordered home by the government. The animals are now in limbo and could be sent back to sea for a month-long journey to Israel around Africa, industry officials and the government said. Farm and exporter groups say the animals on board the MV Bahijah are in good health, but with temperatures close to 40°C, animal rights have criticized the situation. The ordeal shows that the live export trade is “rotten to its core,” lawmaker Josh Wilson said. “What is being contemplated is a 60-day voyage for 14,000 sheep on a stinking hot, and literally stinking, metal vessel,” he told 10 News. “It’s very hard to imagine that that is consistent with the animal welfare standards that Australians expect to be applied to Australian animals.”
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
DEADLY PREDATORS: In New South Wales, smart drumlines — anchored buoys with baited hooks — send an alert when a shark bites, allowing the sharks to be tagged High above Sydney’s beaches, drones seek one of the world’s deadliest predators, scanning for the flick of a tail, the swish of a fin or a shadow slipping through the swell. Australia’s oceans are teeming with sharks, with great whites topping the list of species that might fatally chomp a human. Undeterred, Australians flock to the sea in huge numbers — with a survey last year showing that nearly two-thirds of the population made a total of 650 million coastal visits in a single year. Many beach lovers accept the risks. When a shark killed surfer Mercury Psillakis off a northern Sydney beach last
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