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BEIJING: A Chinese court on Thursday upheld the death penalty for a US citizen over the murder of his girlfriend, calling the conviction “accurate” and sentence “appropriate.” Shadeed Abdulmateen had been found guilty in April of stabbing the 21-year-old woman in the face and neck multiple times when they met to talk about disagreements in their relationship. He appealed against the death sentence handed to him at the time. But a higher court in eastern China on Thursday rebuffed Abdulmateen’s appeal, according to an official statement. The Zhejiang High People’s Court said Abdulmateen had threatened the woman after she told him multiple times that she wanted to break up. On the night of the murder in June 2021 they met near a bus stop in Ningbo, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of Shanghai. Abdulmateen turned up with a folding knife and “stabbed Chen’s neck and face multiple times, causing Chen to lose a large volume of blood and die on the spot.” The court on Thursday said the initial conviction was “accurate, the sentencing was appropriate, and the trial procedure was legal.” When asked for comment a US Embassy spokesperson told Reuters that they were “aware of a court decision related to a US citizen.” “We take seriously our responsibility to assist US citizens abroad and are monitoring the situation,” the spokesperson said via email. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.” Human rights groups say China executes more prisoners every year than any other country, but executions of Westerners are rare. The most recent case involving a Westerner is believed to be that of Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen put to death in 2009 for heroin trafficking, according to state news agency Xinhua.
COLOMBO: Children in Sri Lanka are “going to bed hungry” because of the island nation’s economic crisis, the UN said Friday, warning other South Asian countries could be approaching similar shortages. Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst downturn on record after running out of foreign currency to buy imports, leaving scarce supplies of food, fuel and other essentials. The crisis was being acutely felt by families who were “skipping regular meals” because kitchen staples were becoming unaffordable, said George Laryea-Adjei, the South Asia director for the UN children’s agency (UNICEF). “Children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from,” he told reporters. Sri Lanka defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt in April and is currently in bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund. Soaring energy prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also battered neighboring economies, and Laryea-Adjei said other countries in the region could face their own nutrition crises. “Acute economic precarity and inflation across South Asia is poised to further threaten the lives of children,” he said. “What I saw in Sri Lanka is a caution for other countries in South Asia.” UNICEF has issued an appeal for $25 million to meet urgent needs for at least half of Sri Lanka’s child population. The government this month issued its own appeal to tackle rapidly spreading malnutrition among children. Official figures in 2021 showed 127,000 out of 570,000 pre-school students nationwide were malnourished. Since then, officials believe the figures have skyrocketed because of the full impact of food shortages and spiralling inflation. Former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned last month after thousands of protesters, infuriated by the country’s predicament, stormed his official residence.
COLOMBO: Children in Sri Lanka are “going to bed hungry” because of the island nation’s economic crisis, the UN said Friday, warning other South Asian countries could be approaching similar shortages. Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst downturn on record after running out of foreign currency to buy imports, leaving scarce supplies of food, fuel and other essentials. The crisis was being acutely felt by families who were “skipping regular meals” because kitchen staples were becoming unaffordable, said George Laryea-Adjei, the South Asia director for the UN children’s agency (UNICEF). “Children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from,” he told reporters. Sri Lanka defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt in April and is currently in bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund. Soaring energy prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also battered neighboring economies, and Laryea-Adjei said other countries in the region could face their own nutrition crises. “Acute economic precarity and inflation across South Asia is poised to further threaten the lives of children,” he said. “What I saw in Sri Lanka is a caution for other countries in South Asia.” UNICEF has issued an appeal for $25 million to meet urgent needs for at least half of Sri Lanka’s child population. The government this month issued its own appeal to tackle rapidly spreading malnutrition among children. Official figures in 2021 showed 127,000 out of 570,000 pre-school students nationwide were malnourished. Since then, officials believe the figures have skyrocketed because of the full impact of food shortages and spiralling inflation. Former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned last month after thousands of protesters, infuriated by the country’s predicament, stormed his official residence.
A school district in southwest Missouri decided to bring back spanking as a form of discipline for students — if their parents agree — despite warnings from many public health experts that the practice is detrimental to students. Classes resumed Tuesday in the Cassville School District district for the first time since the school board in June approved bringing corporal punishment back to the 1,900-student district about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of Springfield. The district had dropped the practice in 2001. The policy states that corporal punishment will be used only when other forms of discipline, such as suspensions, have failed and then only with the superintendent's permission. Superintendent Merlyn Johnson told The Springfield News-Leader the decision came after an anonymous survey found that parents, students and school employees were concerned about student behavior and discipline. “We’ve had people actually thank us for it,” he said. “Surprisingly, those on social media would probably be appalled to hear us say these things, but the majority of people that I’ve run into have been supportive.” Parent Khristina Harkey told The Associated Press on Friday that she is on the fence about Cassville's policy. She and her husband did not opt-in because her 6-year-old son, Anakin Modine, is autistic and would hit back if he were spanked. But she said corporal punishment worked for her when she was a “troublemaker” during her school years in California. “There are all different types of kids,” Harkey said. “Some people need a good butt-whipping. I was one of them." Morgan Craven, national director of policy, advocacy and community engagement with the Intercultural Development Research Association, a national educational equity nonprofit, called corporal punishment a "wildly inappropriate, ineffective practice." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that corporal punishment is constitutional and left it up to states to set their own policies. Craven said 19 states, many in the South, have laws allowing it in schools. The most current data from 2017-18 shows about 70,000 children in the U.S. were hit at least once in their schools. Students who are hit at school do not fare as well academically as their peers and suffer physical and psychological trauma, Craven said. In some cases, children are hurt so badly that they need medical attention. “If you have a situation where a kid goes to school and they could be slapped for, you know, some minor offense, it certainly creates a really hostile, unpredictable and violent environment," Craven said. “And that’s not what we want for kids in schools.” But Tess Walters, 54, the guardian of her 8-year-old granddaughter, had no qualms about signing the corporal punishment opt-in papers. She said the possibility of being spanked is a deterrent for her granddaughter, who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. “I’ve read some some people’s responses on Facebook recently, and they’re just going over the top like, ‘Oh, this is abuse, and, oh, you’re just going to threaten them with, you know, violence.’ And I’m like, ‘What? The child is getting spanked once; it’s not beatings.’ People are just going crazy. They’re just being ridiculous,” Walters said. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer with American Psychological Association, said decades of research shows corporal punishment will not reduce inappropriate behavior and is likely to increase aggression, rage, hostility and could lead to depression and self-esteem problems. Prinstein said better methods for eliminating undesirable conduct including problem-solving training; rewarding positive behavior, such as with extra recess; and providing extra attention in the classroom. “Parents are experts on what works for their own children,” Prinstein said. “But it’s important for parents to be educated on very substantial science literature demonstrating again that corporal punishment is not a consistently effective way of changing undesirable behavior.” Sarah Font, an associate professor of sociology and public policy at Pennsylvania State University, coauthored a 2016 study on the subject. Her research found that districts using corporal punishment are generally in poor, Republican-leaning rural areas in Southern states. Font said Black children are disproportionately subjected to it, in part because the policies are more commonplace in districts with higher minority populations. Craven also pointed to racial bias that leads people to view the behavior of Black students differently from other students. “And the thing that I always have to say — that I hate that I have to say — is that Black children are not more likely to misbehave in school. They’re not more likely to break school rules,” she said. Cassville School District spokeswoman Mindi Artherton was out of the office Friday and a woman who answered the phone in her office suggested reading the policy. She said staff had already done interviews. “At this time, we will focus on educating our students,” she added, before hanging up. The policy says a witness from the district must be present and that the discipline will not be used in front of other students. “When it becomes necessary to use corporal punishment, it shall be administered so that there can be no chance of bodily injury or harm,” the policy says. “Striking a student on the head or face is not permitted.” In Missouri, periodic efforts to ban corporal punishment in schools have failed to gain traction in the Legislature. The state does not track which districts allow spanking because those decisions are made at the local level, a spokeswoman for Missouri’s K-12 education department said. U.S. Sen. Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, is pushing for a ban on the use of corporal punishment in schools that receive federal funding. He has called it a “barbaric practice” that allows teachers and administrators to physically abuse students.
QUETTA: Hussain Bakhsh, displaced from his village in Pakistan’s southwestern Jaffarabad district after his home was washed away in floods, has been living with 20 relatives in makeshift accommodation on a highway for over a week.
Bakhsh is one of over 30 million people in Pakistan left homeless by this year’s monsoon rains, killing more than 930 people. The southwestern Balochistan province, and Sindh in the south of the country, have been the worst hit by rain damage and floods.
The country’s climate change minister called the situation a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions” on Thursday.
“I have been living with my children for the last eight days in a small camp, which has a plastic roof,” Bakhsh, 70, told Arab News. “I don’t have a tent or food items for my family.
“There was so much flooding and it’s been eight days that we are lying on the roads,” he said.
“Government has done nothing at all and we didn’t get any relief. We are poor people and we are dying due to hunger.”
Indeed, Balochistan, the country’s most impoverished province, has suffered the most from the recent rains, with much of its territory submerged in water and main roads and highways cut off from the rest of the country. Rains have claimed at least 230 lives in the province since mid-June.
Funding and reconstruction efforts will be a challenge for cash-strapped Pakistan, which is having to cut spending to ensure the International Monetary Fund approves the release of much-needed bailout money.
The National Disaster Management Authority said in a report that in the last 24 hours, 150 km of roads had been damaged across the country, and over 82,000 homes damaged.
Since mid-June, when the monsoon began, over 3,000 km of road, 130 bridges and 495,000 homes have been damaged, according to the NDMA’s last situation report.
Balochistan’s main districts, including Jaffarabad, Naseerabad and Sibi, have been inundated, and residents have been sitting in the open air near highways with their belongings and livestock.
Muhammad Suleman, 37, who lost his home, crops and cattle in the Murad Colony neighborhood of Dera Allah Yar, said the floods had completely destroyed his village.
“The government has left us to die under the sky,” he told Arab News. “We are surrounded by water since it has been raining for the last three days. Our children are falling sick, and there is a danger of major outbreak of disease in the entire Naseerabad division.
“One hundred percent of our villages are destroyed. Livestock has died. Wheat stock is finished. Rice fields are destroyed. Houses are damaged. Nothing is left.”
Another resident, Amanullah, said more than five feet of water had entered his home last week, and his family had no option but to leave and find a safer place.
“We have waited for 24 hours, but not a single government representative has come to see our plight. Now, we are moving toward the bypass to seek refuge,” the 18-year-old said, pointing towards the main thoroughfare.
The deputy commissioner of Jaffarabad, Abdul Razzaq Khajak, said about half a million people in the district had been affected by floods, but that the administration was doing its best to provide relief.
“Jaffarabad is not the only district hit by floods but the entire province is drowned,” he told Arab News. “The Provincial Disaster Management Authority has provided us 800 tents and we have distributed them among our people, but the scale of the floods is huge and it will take us time to deliver relief goods in all corners of the district.”
Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Quddus Bizenjo told reporters the government would provide compensation.
“We will make houses for all these people. Whoever lost their livestock, we will give them animals. Whoever lost their agricultural lands, we will help them revive them,” he said. “Whatever damages have occurred, we will provide the compensation.”
BRUSSELS: A van driver plowed through a crowded cafe terrace in Brussels’ city center shopping and tourism district on Friday, lightly wounding six people before escaping the scene. Belgium’s terrorism tracking Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM) briefly raised the threat level in the capital from “medium” to “serious” — from two to three on a scale of four. But the level was dropped back to medium a few hours later after officials found “reassuring elements in their investigation,” an OCAM spokesman told AFP. Initially, police had said it was too soon to speculate on whether the driver had deliberately targeted the diners, but that investigators had found the van and were hunting for the suspect. “Shortly before 1:00 p.m. a van drove into a terrace on Saint Michel street. The driver fled in his vehicle, the emergency services were very quickly on the spot,” a spokeswoman told AFP. “There were six minor injuries that were treated at the scene,” she said. Brussels mayor Philippe Close told the daily Le Soir there had been a mixture of tourists and local shoppers on the terrace and that some of the witnesses were in a state of shock. “What is certain is that the vehicle was traveling at an extremely high speed,” he said. Brussels prosecutors were to hold a news conference later on Friday to provide an update in their investigation.