Fosun founder Guo Guangchang appears in public
Guo Guangchang, the high-profile Chinese tycoon detained by police last week, has made an appearance at his company’s annual meeting in Shanghai.
The Fosun International chairman was first reported missing on Friday. The company later revealed he was assisting authorities with a probe.
Fosun president Wang Qunbin said the investigation mostly concerned Mr Guo’s personal affairs, not company business.
He said he could not give more details as the investigation was “sensitive”.
The website Caixin reported early on Monday that he had been released by police. Mr Guo received a standing ovation at company meeting, a person in the audience told Reuters.
Scuffles outside Beijing court as human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang goes on trial
Activists and diplomats were pushed and shoved on the street by police who refused to allow them into the trial of a campaigner charged with incitement
Scuffles erupted outside a Beijing courthouse on Monday as China’s most influential champion of free speech went on trial for sending seven sarcastic tweets.
Activists say the likely imprisonment of Pu Zhiqiang, a 50-year-old human rights lawyer, represents the latest chapter in president Xi Jinping’s intensifying offensive against Communist party opponents.
Pu has been in detention since May 2014, when he was detained after attending a gathering to commemorate the 1989 massacre of protestors around Tiananmen Square.
On Monday morning, as a thick smog enveloped the Chinese capital, about 40 demonstrators gathered outside Beijing’s No 2 intermediate people’s court holding placards and chanting: “Pu Zhiqiang is not guilty! Pu Zhiqiang is not guilty! Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech!”
Shaker Aamer says Guantanamo was like Azkaban prison from Harry Potter novels
He said Guantanamo’s purpose was to make its inmates ‘feelingless’
The last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay has compared the notorious US military facility to Azkaban, the fictional island prison from the Harry Potter novels where most inmates die from despair.
Shaker Aamer, 48, returned to the UK in October after finally being allowed to leave the US base in Cuba where he was held without trial for almost 14 years. In his first television interview since being released, he said Guantanamo’s purpose was to make its inmates “feelingless”.
Comparing the facility to the fictional prison from JK Rowling’s novels, Mr Aamer said his interrogators once told him they had his family and would rape his daughter if he did not talk, describing the experience as “worse than the beating” he received from guards.
Fear, Anger and Hatred: The Rise of Germany’s New Right
For years, a sense of disillusionment has been growing on the right. Now, the refugee crisis has magnified that frustration. Increasingly, people from the very center of society are identifying with the movement — even as political debate coarsens and violence increases. By SPIEGEL Staff
Martin Bahrmann, a local politician in the Saxon town of Meissen, was just preparing to speak in a council debate on refugee shelters when a ball-point pen ricoched off the back of his head. It was a cheap, plastic writing utensil — blue with white writing.
As a member of the business friendly Free Democrats (FDP), Bahrmann’s seat in the regional council is at the very back and the visitors’ gallery is just behind him. The pen must have come from somebody in the audience. When Bahrmann turned around, he found himself looking at a sea of hostile faces. Although there were around 80 visitors in the gallery, nobody admitted to having seen who threw the pen. On the contrary: The FDP representative and his colleagues were later insulted as being “traitors to the German people.”
Firefighters wanted: S. Africa’s record drought sparks recruitment drive
As South Africa battles its worst drought in three decades, efforts to protect its national parks are providing jobs for marginalized youth.
SUIKERBOSRAND NATURE RESERVE, SOUTH AFRICA — All through the southern hemisphere spring, Vusi Nkabinde waited for rain. But as first September, and then October slid by beneath hard blue skies, the sprawling grasslands here began to turn crisp and wither. Temperatures soared to record highs and the winds picked up, fast and searing.
Mr. Nkabinde had been a forest firefighter long enough to worry; this was the season when he and his crew typically caught a break after months of bone-dry prairie winter.
This year was different. By the time the storms came in mid-November, the region had gone nearly nine months without a drop of rain.
“It was very late, and it was very little,” he says. “That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Across South Africa, the worst drought in more than three decades is ravaging harvests and livestock, driving up the price of staple foods and threatening the livelihoods of thousands of subsistence farmers. Around 2.7 million households face water shortages, and some cities are already rationing supplies.
Japan has exceptionally low crime rates. But there’s a dark side to its justice system.
By German Lopez
Japan has exceptionally low levels of crime. In 2011, its intentional homicide rate was 0.3 per 100,000 people, while America’s rate was 4.7 per 100,000 people. Japan’s gun death statistics are particularly impressive, given the recent mass shootings in the US: In 2013, Japan’s gun homicide rate was 0.01 per 100,000 people, while America’s rate was 3.5 — 350 times the rate of Japan.
But as the video above by the Economist shows, behind Japan’s low crime rates are some very troubling criminal justice practices. The Economist explained:
Some suspects will falsely admit guilt just to end a stressful interrogation, and interrogations in Japan can be very stressful. Police and prosecutors may hold ordinary criminal suspects for up to 23 days without charge—longer than most other rich countries allow even terrorist suspects to be detained. Access to defence lawyers during this period is limited. In theory, suspects have the right to remain silent; but in practice prosecutors portray silence as evidence of guilt.