Man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie rejects plea deal involving terrorism charge
Man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie rejects plea deal involving terrorism charge/node/2542431/world
Man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie rejects plea deal involving terrorism charge
Hadi Matar, the man charged with stabbing author Salman Rushdie, arrives for an arraignment at the Chautauqua County Courthouse, Aug. 13, 2022, in Mayville, N.Y. (AP)
Man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie rejects plea deal involving terrorism charge
Rushdie, who detailed the attack and his recovery in a memoir, had spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” which Muslims consider blasphemous
Updated 03 July 2024
AP
NEW YORK: The man charged with stabbing author Salman Rushdie rejected a plea deal Tuesday that would have shortened his state prison term but exposed him to a federal terrorism-related charge, the suspect’s lawyer said.
Hadi Matar, 26, has been held without bail since the 2022 attack, in which he is accused of stabbing Rushdie more than a dozen times and blinding him in one eye as the acclaimed writer was onstage, about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
Matar’s attorney, Nathaniel Barone, confirmed that Matar, who lived in Fairview, New Jersey, rejected the agreement Tuesday in Mayville, New York.
The agreement would have had Matar plead guilty in Chautauqua County to attempted murder in exchange for a maximum state prison sentence of 20 years, down from 25 years. It would have also required him to plead guilty to a federal charge of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, which could result in an additional 20 years, attorneys said.
Rushdie, who detailed the attack and his recovery in a memoir, had spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. The author reemerged into the public the late 1990s and has traveled freely over the past two decades.
Matar was born in the US but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. His mother has said that her son had become withdrawn and moody after visiting his father in Lebanon in 2018.
Rushdie wrote in his memoir that he saw a man running toward him in the amphitheater, where he was about to speak about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm. The author is on the witness list for Matar’s upcoming trial.
Representatives for Rushdie did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Pope arrives in Papua New Guinea for the second leg of his Southeast Asia and Oceania trip
A cannon salute and marching band greeted the pope on the tarmac of the Port Moresby airport
The country has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries
Updated 5 sec ago
AP
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea: Pope Francis arrived in Papua New Guinea on Friday for the second leg of his four-nation trip through Southeast Asia and Oceania, becoming the second pope to visit the poor, strategically important South Pacific nation.
A cannon salute and marching band greeted the 87-year-old pope on the tarmac of the Port Moresby airport as he arrived after a six-hour flight from Jakarta, Indonesia. During the brief welcome ceremony the pope momentarily lost his balance while maneuvering from his wheelchair to a chair, but his security guards steadied him.
The packed three-day Indonesia visit culminated with a jubilant Mass on Thursday afternoon before a crowd that filled two sports stadiums and overflowed into a parking lot.
“Don’t tire of dreaming and of building a civilization of peace,” Francis urged them in an ad-libbed homily. “Be builders of hope. Be builders of peace.”
The Vatican had originally expected the Mass would draw some 60,000 people, and Indonesian authorities had predicted 80,000. But the Vatican spokesman quoted local organizers as saying more than 100,000 attended.
A woman wears a shirt with a photo of Pope Francis at a market ahead of his visit to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, on Sept. 6, 2024. (AP)
“I feel very lucky compared to other people who can’t come here or even had the intention to come here,” said Vienna Frances Florensius Basol, who came with her husband and a group of 40 people from Sabah, Malaysia, but couldn’t get into the stadium.
“Even though we are outside with other Indonesians, seeing the screen, I think I am lucky enough,” she said from a parking lot where a giant TV screen was erected for anyone who didn’t have tickets for the service.
While in Indonesia, Francis sought to encourage the country’s 8.9 million Catholics, who make up just 3 percent of the population of 275 million, while also seeking to boost interfaith ties with the country boasting the world’s largest Muslim population.
In the highlight of the visit, Francis and the grand imam of Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, signed a joint declaration pledging to work to end religiously inspired violence and protect the environment.
In Papua New Guinea, Francis’ agenda is aligned with more of his social justice priorities. The poor, strategically important South Pacific nation is home to more than 10 million people, most of whom are subsistence farmers.
John Lavu, the choir conductor at St. Charles Luwanga parish in the capital, Port Moresby, said the visit would help him grow stronger in his Catholic faith.
“I have lived this faith all my life, but the coming of the Holy Father, the head of the church, to Papua New Guinea and to be a witness of his coming to us is going to be very important for me in my life as a Catholic,” he said on the eve of Francis’ arrival.
Francis will be traveling to remote Vanimo to check in on some Catholic missionaries from his native Argentina who are trying to spread the Catholic faith to a largely tribal people who also practice pagan and Indigenous traditions.
The country, the South Pacific’s most populous after Australia, has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries, with conflicts becoming more and more lethal in recent decades.
History’s first Latin American pope will likely refer to the need to find harmony among tribal groups while visiting, the Vatican said. Another possible theme is the country’s fragile ecosystem, its rich natural resources at risk of exploitation and the threat posed by climate change.
The Papua New Guinean government has blamed extraordinary rainfall for a massive landslide in May that buried a village in Enga province. The government said more than 2,000 people were killed, while the United Nations estimated the death toll at 670.
Francis becomes only the second pope to visit Papua New Guinea, after St. John Paul II touched down in 1984 during one of his lengthy, globetrotting voyages. Then, John Paul paid tribute to the Catholic missionaries who had already been trying for a century to bring the faith to the country.
Papua New Guinea, a Commonwealth nation that was a colony of nearby Australia until independence in 1975, is the second leg of Francis’ four-nation trip. In the longest and farthest voyage of his papacy, Francis will also visit East Timor and Singapore before returning to the Vatican on Sept. 13.
Philippines’ deported ex-mayor Alice Guo arrives home from Indonesia
Alice Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, was arrested by Indonesian authorities on Wednesday
Guo, who says she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, has denied the accusations, calling them malicious
Updated 29 min 17 sec ago
Reuters
MANILA: Former Philippines mayor Alice Guo, accused of ties to Chinese criminal syndicates and laundering more than 100 million pesos ($1.79 million), arrived in Manila early on Friday after being deported from Indonesia.
Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, was arrested by Indonesian authorities on Wednesday after leaving the Philippines in July. She is wanted by the Philippine Senate for refusing to appear before a congressional investigation into her alleged criminal ties.
Philippine law enforcement agencies, including the anti-money laundering council (AMLC), have filed several counts of money laundering against Guo and 35 others with the justice department.
Guo, who says she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, has denied the accusations, calling them malicious. She was deported from Indonesia for violating immigration laws, Jakarta’s immigration office said on Thursday.
The former mayor arrived in Manila on a private plane flanked by Philippine law enforcement authorities, including the country’s interior minister, Benjamin Abalos Jr., who led her handover from Indonesian authorities in Jakarta on Thursday.
“I have received death threats and I am asking for the help (of Philippine authorities),” Guo told a press briefing shortly after her arrival in Manila.
Abalos committed to provide security for Guo, but urged her to disclose the truth. “Disclose all the names in order to serve justice and so all this ends. That is the only way we can help her,” he said.
The Senate launched an investigation into Guo in May after a raid in March by law enforcers on a casino in Bamban town, where she was mayor, uncovered what they said were scams run from a facility built on land Guo partly owned.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. urged Guo on Friday to disclose how these offshore gaming operators, locally known as POGOs, had branched out into crime. Marcos banned the online gambling industry in July.
“It will not help her at all to be evasive,” Marcos told reporters. Guo is set to appear before the Senate on Monday when it resumes its investigation.
Guo became mayor of Bamban town in Tarlac province in the northern Philippines in 2022. She ran as a Filipino citizen but her fingerprints were later found to match those of a Chinese national, Guo Hua Ping, the National Bureau of Investigation said in August.
In August an anti-graft office removed her as mayor on the grounds of grave misconduct over her alleged ties to illegal gaming operations in Bamban.
China stops foreign adoptions of its children after three decades
More than 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted by families across the world since 1992
It was not immediately clear what would happen to families who were in the process of adopting children from China
Updated 52 min 16 sec ago
Reuters
HONG KONG: China will no longer send children overseas for adoption, the government said, overturning a more than three-decade rule that was rooted in its once strict one-child policy.
More than 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted by families across the world since 1992, when China first opened its doors to international adoption.
Around 82,000 of these children, mostly girls, have been adopted in the United States, according to China’s Children International (CCI).
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Mao Ning said the Chinese government had adjusted its cross-border adoption policy to be “in line” with international trends.
“Apart from the adoption of a child or stepchild of blood relatives of the same generation who are within three generations of foreigners coming to China to adopt, China will not send children abroad for adoption,” Mao said.
“We express our appreciation to those foreign governments and families, who wish to adopt Chinese children, for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown,” she added.
It was not immediately clear what would happen to families who were in the process of adopting children from China.
The rule change comes as Chinese policymakers struggle to encourage young couples to get married and have children after the population fell for two consecutive years.
China has one of the lowest birth rates globally and has been trying to incentivise young women to have children. Many, however, have been put off by the high cost of childcare, worries over job security and their future outlook as growth in the world’s second largest economy slows.
China implemented a rigorous one-child policy from 1979-2015 to reduce its population. When families were restricted to having only one child, many opted to keep male children, who are traditionally expected to be the main caregivers for their families, and give up females for adoption.
China’s move to halt international adoptions comes after the Netherlands in May banned its citizens from adopting children from foreign countries. In Denmark, people will no longer be able to adopt children from abroad after the only adoption agency said it was stopping operations.
World’s largest indoor ski resort opens in Shanghai as China logs hottest month
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP
Shanghai: Shanghai opened the world’s largest indoor ski resort on Friday, welcoming visitors in snowsuits to its pistes as China reported its hottest August in 60 years.
This year’s northern summer saw the highest global temperatures ever recorded, and in the faux Alpine square where the resort’s opening ceremony took place, the mercury had already hit 30 degrees Celsius by 9:00 am.
But the temperature plummeted to well below zero inside the cavernous atrium, where visitors switched from sunglasses and T-shirts into padded overalls, some opting for designer goggles or flapping bat-winged helmets.
At the top of a piste, snowboarder Jessica Zhang was unfazed by the August heat record.
“When it comes to climate I feel like you get ups and downs in temperature — maybe every few years a hottest year comes along,” she shrugged.
This year is likely to be the Earth’s hottest ever logged, beating the record set in 2023, according to the EU’s climate monitor.
China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, although in recent years it has also emerged as a global leader in renewable energy.
Climate change has affected traditional outdoor skiing destinations, with ice and snow retreating as world temperatures rise.
“In China, it might have more of an effect in the north because of climate change, there are fewer people doing winter sports there... so some of the snow parks just aren’t operating well, they’re shrinking,” said Zhang Jin, a 48-year-old skier.
“Instead, it’s this kind of thing that’s opening up right now, larger indoor ones, which I think is still pretty good.”
Even as the country warms, huge government support and the interest of an expanding middle class have seen the ski industry coast to new heights in China, particularly after Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The country leads the world when it comes to indoor ski resort building, boasting half of the world’s top ten based on snow area, according to Daxue Consulting.
On Friday, the Shanghai L*SNOW Indoor Skiing Theme Resort was officially certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest, overtaking the previous record-holder — also in China, in northern Harbin.
Modelled like a glacier, the almost 100,000-square-meter snow world towers over coastal Lingang, about 1.5 hours away from the city center.
Inside, a chairlift, cable car, and a green and red “steam train” ferry visitors to the complex’s four ski slopes and other rides.
“There were no ski resorts around Shanghai before and there was no way to practice in the summer. But now I have the opportunity to do it... so I’m quite happy,” snowboarder Cynthia Zhang told AFP before launching herself down the curving white incline.
A Shanghai government report in August acknowledged that such projects “will inevitably consume a lot of energy.”
Resort executive Yin Kang told AFP that to keep the temperature below zero, 72 cooling machines and 33 snow-making machines worked continuously.
The Shanghai government report said the resort was built to maximize energy reuse, through elements such as its ice storage and waste-heat recovery systems.
Over three quarters of the resort’s rooftop is covered in photovoltaics, or solar panels, which helps counteract its carbon footprint, it said.
“We have taken a lot of energy-saving measures,” Yin told AFP.
The resort’s completion has been pushed back several times. Industry media reported its originally planned opening date to be 2019.
Its soft opening period has not been wholly smooth.
The resort said it would add more safety measures after an accident in which a guest claimed a finger was severed, state media reported Wednesday.
Myanmar communists take in liberated elephants as battle against junta rages
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP
MANDALAY: Communist rebels battling Myanmar’s junta have taken in 138 elephants as fighting rages in the jungles and scrubland around Mandalay.
The tuskers have been coming into the rebel camp in twos and threes since July, many led by handlers fleeing the junta-controlled timber camps that employ them.
Others have been taken as spoils in territory captured by the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) as it battles the military and its 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.
“We were worried that if no one took control of them, these elephants would fall into the hands of traffickers,” said Ni Ni Kyaw, the general secretary of the CPB’s People’s Liberation Army.
“If these elephants reach the black market or are taken by traffickers, they will have a huge problem,” she told AFP on Thursday.
State timber enterprises in Myanmar are thought to employ around 3,000 elephants, the majority dragging freshly cut trees through the dense jungle to transport hubs and mills.
At one PLA camp last week, around a dozen of the animals knelt in a line alongside their handlers before heading off on a march.
A (CPB) soldier clad in camouflage and carrying a rifle stepped up to the wooden platform on one elephant’s back and the small herd rumbled off into the forest.
In olden times Burmese kings fought their rivals on elephant-back and rode the beasts into battle, according to chronicles.
But Ni Ni Kyaw said it was not certain how the communists would use the animals in their battle against the military.
“We are worried that we are going to lose this treasure of our country, therefore, we will take care of them as best as we can,” she said.
The PLA was providing rice and cooking oil to the elephant handlers — known as mahouts — and their family members, she added.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and seized power in 2021.
The resulting military crackdown reignited clashes with long-established ethnic minority armed groups, as well as newly formed pro-democracy “People’s Defense Forces.”
The military has lost swaths of territory in northern Shan state and around Mandalay to an alliance of the armed ethnic minority groups and PDFs battling to overturn the coup.
“Even our human beings have many difficulties due to the current fighting and there are a lot of displaced people,” said Ni Ni Kyaw.
“Elephants have big bodies and they eat a lot, so they need a lot of space in the jungle.”
“When the revolution ends one day, we will have a new government and will hand these elephants to the forest department.”
