Month: April 2019

A popular erotica writer in China has been slapped with a prison sentence of more than a decade over a novel containing gay sex scenes, sparking an uproar over the severity of the punishment.

Written under the pen name Tianyi, the book Gongzhan tells the tale of an illicit love affair between a teacher and a student and sold 7,000 copies online last year. Local authorities said the book describes obscene and perverted sexual acts between males, and that the author, a woman whose surname is Liu, made "illegal" profits totaling 150,000 yuan (£16,830), according to state media.

Pornography is illegal in China, and prison sentences for producing and distributing such content for profit can vary from a few years to life. Still, the harsh sentence for Ms Liu incited public outrage as lighter sentences have been passed down for more serious crimes, including rape and murder.

Last year, two ride-hailing drivers convicted of raping and assaulting passengers were given sentences of 10 months and 3.5 years.

In 2013, a local official in Yunnan, a southern Chinese province, was given a five-year sentence after being found guilty of kidnapping and raping a four-year-old girl; after public discontent, his sentence was raised to eight years. Another case cited by critics was a man was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in 2009 for beating his wife to death in Beijing. 

China’s judicial system is opaque, confessions are sometimes coerced, and the courts can be pressured by the ruling Communist Party, leading to uneven legal interpretations and enforcement.

Li Yinhe, a renowned Chinese sociologist, also questioned whether the sentence was too harsh: “She did violate criminal law, but even a one-year sentence is too much, not to mention 10 years,” Ms Li posted online.

She also pointed out that a typical public response to punishing serious criminals would be relief, and not outcry. “It means society does not thinks she committed a heinous crime.”

The Communist Party government is engaged in a broader crackdown on online content, concerned that rumour-mongering or other illicit information could create widespread panic or public disorder.

Information and news in China are tightly controlled by government censors, with many foreign news websites blocked online, as well as Western social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.

With assistance by Paula Jin

The American artist Jeff Koons has been found guilty of plagiarising an iconic French clothing advertisement for one of his celebrated sculptures, Fait d’Hiver.

Advertising creative director Franck Davidovici had sued Mr Koons, among the world’s most bankable living artists, for copyright infringement, saying he had produced what his lawyer called a “servile copy” of a famous advertising campaign he ran in 1985 for French clothing brand Naf-Naf.

The clothing campaign showed a young girl lying in snow, apparently the victim of an avalanche, being nosed by a pig with a barrel of rum under its neck in reference to the famous Saint Bernard rescue dogs. Naf-Naf is the name of one of the three little pigs that made the most resilient house out of bricks.

Mr Koon’s 1988 artwork, which was bought by the Prada Foundation for around $3.7 million (£2.8m) at Christie’s in New York in 2007, bore a striking resemblance to the Davidovici work down to the woman’s facial expression and hairstyle and the cask hanging from the pig’s neck.

The two even share the same name of Fait d’Hiver – a play on the French terms “winter” and “news in brief”. The court ordered Mr Koons, his business, and the Pompidou museum – which had exhibited the work in 2014 – to pay Mr Davidovici a total of €135,000 (£118,000) in compensation.

Jeff Koons LLC was also fined €11,000 for reproducing the pig on the artist’s website, while the Flammarion publishing firm was fined €2,000 for selling a book which contained the work.

But the court did not order the sculpture’s seizure, as demanded by the plaintiff. This was not the first time Mr Koons has been found guilty of forgery.

Last year, a Paris court ordered the American artist’s limited company, Jeff Koons LLC, to pay the heirs of late French photographer Jean-François Bauret  €40,000, saying his Naked sculpture had been copied from a 1975 postcard picture taken by Mr Bauret called Enfants.

The artist is no stranger to controversy in Paris. 

Earlier this year, Françoise Nyssen, the French culture minister, announced that a sculpture of a giant bunch of tulips Mr Koons gave the city in remembrance of the 2015 Paris terror attacks victims would not be installed in front of the capital’s Museum of Modern Art and the Palais de Tokyo, after outcry.

But the work sparked a row with 23 figures from France’s art and culture world denouncing the choice of a prime, central location for the huge structure. 

After months of dithering, last month, Paris town hall said that the sculpture would no doubt be installed in the municipal gardens of the of the Beaux-Arts museum in the Petit Palais, opposite the Grand Palais by the Champs-Elysées.

Prince Charles tried out some new phrases in Pidgin when he visited Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. 

The Prince of Wales said it was particularly special to be there after nearly 30 years, and that the only words to describe it were ‘God don butter my bread,’ a term in Pidgin meaning ‘God has blessed me.’ 

‘How you dey?’ (‘How are you?’) he asked assembled dignitaries and leading politicians, as well as stars from the world of fashion, music and the arts.

The Pidgin language is the widely spoken ‘lingua franca’ of much of west and central Africa, a way of communicating meant to overcome the barriers of Africa’s many different dialects that first began in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

The language is a cultural force, used in everything from Afrobeat music to movies emerging from Nigeria’s Nollywood, now the world’s second-largest film industry. 

The prince also spoke about his commitment to Lagos through The Prince’s Trust initiative, which sees money invested in return for social value.

The visit in Lagos was Charles’ final stop of his eight-day trip to west Africa.

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A Philippine court found former first lady Imelda Marcos guilty of corruption and ordered her arrest on Friday in a rare conviction among many cases that she plans to appeal to avoid jail and losing her seat in Congress.

The special anti-corruption Sandiganbayan court sentenced Marcos, 89, to serve 6 to 11 years in prison for each of the seven counts of violating an anti-corruption law when she illegally funneled about $200 million to Swiss foundations in the 1970s as Metropolitan Manila governor.

Neither Marcos nor anyone representing her attended Friday’s court hearing.

Marcos said in a statement that the decision was being studied by one of her lawyers who notified the Marcos family that he intends to appeal the decision. Anti-Marcos activists and human rights victims welcomed the conviction as long overdue.

The court disqualified Marcos from holding public office, but she can remain a member of the powerful House of Representatives while appealing the decision. Her congressional term will end next year but she has registered to run to replace her daughter as governor of northern Ilocos Norte province.

"I was jumping up and down in joy in disbelief," said former Commission on Human Rights chairwoman Loretta Ann Rosales, who was among many activists locked up after Imelda’s husband, former President Ferdinand Marcos, declared martial law in the Philippines in 1972.

Rosales said the decision was a huge setback to efforts by the Marcos family to revise history by denying many of the atrocities under the dictatorship, and urged Filipinos to fight all threats against democracy and civil liberties.

Former Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., who was also jailed during the Marcos dictatorship, said it was up to voters in next year’s May 13 local elections, where Marcos is a candidate, if they want "somebody who has a bad name representing them, that’s your call."

Imelda Marcos’ husband was ousted by an army-backed "people power" revolt in 1986. He died in self-exile in Hawaii in 1989 but his widow and children returned to the Philippines. Most have been elected to public offices in an impressive political comeback.

Government prosecutor Ryan Quilala told reporters that Marcos and her husband opened and managed Swiss foundations in violation of the Philippine Constitution, using aliases in a bid to hide stolen funds. The Marcoses have been accused of plundering the government’s coffers amid crushing poverty. They have denied any wrongdoing and have successfully fought many other corruption cases.

Imelda Marcos was acquitted Friday in three other cases, which were filed in 1991 and took nearly three decades of trial by several judges and prosecutors. She was once convicted of a graft case in 1993, but the Supreme Court later cleared her of any wrongdoing.

President Rodrigo Duterte, an ally of the Marcoses, said last year the Marcos family had indicated a willingness to return a still-unspecified amount of money and "a few gold bars" to help ease budget deficits. He indicated the family still denied that the assets had been stolen as alleged by political opponents.

Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under martial rule a year before his term was to expire. He padlocked Congress, ordered the arrest of political rivals and left-wing activists and ruled by decree. His family is said to have amassed an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion while he was in power.

A Hawaii court found Marcos liable for human rights violations and awarded $2 billion from his estate to compensate more than 9,000 Filipinos who filed a lawsuit against him for torture, incarceration, extrajudicial killings and disappearances.

Duterte has acknowledged that Imee Marcos, the couple’s daughter and a provincial governor, backed his presidential candidacy. 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday vowed to defend democracy and Europe after the far-Right party Vox’s shock election surge to become kingmaker in the country’s most populous region.

The five-year-old anti-immigration and Eurosceptic party came from the political nowhere to win 12 seats out of 109 in the Andalusian election on Sunday, the first time it has made inroads into a regional parliament. 

The surprise result – the first such achievement by a far Right party since the end of the Franco dictatorship four decades ago – rattled the Socialist government in Madrid.

Mr Sánchez vowed to “defend the Constitution and democracy against fear” in reference to Vox’s radical stance on issues such as immigration, abortion and women’s rights. His government would continue working on a "pro-European project" for Spain, he said on Twitter.

Vox’s ballot box wins almost certainly mean an end to the Socialist PSOE’s decades-long rule in Andalusia. Neither a standard-issue coalition between the PSOE – which sunk to its lowest ever victory margin in the region with just 33 seats – and Left-wing Podemos,  nor a conservative alliance between the Popular Party (PP) and centre-Right Ciudadanos can now muster a majority.  

But those mainstream political parties have differing viewpoints on the desirability of a kingmaker party with policies that include the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants, banning abortion and repealing legislation that protects women from violence.  

Acting Andalusian President Susana Díaz pleaded with other moderate political forces to join her in a united front against the ultra-conservative Vox.

Both the PP and Ciudadanos have seized on the prospect of turfing the Socialists out of power for the first time since Andalusia’s regional government was installed in 1982. But while the PP said it would accept the support of Vox to take office, Ciudadanos displayed reticence. 

“We are going to take on the challenge of forming a government in Andalusia,” said PP leader Pablo Casado after his party finished second behind the PSOE with 26 seats, snubbing the Socialists’ call for a cross-bench coalition. “We have nothing to discuss with the PSOE.”

But third-placed Ciudadanos argued that the new government in Andalusia had to come from the centre of the political spectrum, It called on the PP to back their candidate and for the Socialists to stand aside and abstain, thus making Vox’s support unnecessary.

Vox’s chief candidate in Andalusia, Francisco Serrano, suggested that his party would support a right-of-centre coalition in Andalusia, although the party is meeting later in the week to decide on its strategy before official talks take place. “We will not be an obstacle to ending the Socialist regime,” he said.  

New York City police were seeking on Saturday for an unlucky suitor who dropped an engagement ring down a Times Square grating while proposing to his fiancee.

The man had chosen to pop the question shortly before midnight at the New York landmark.

However, video shared on social media by the New York Police Department showed the man fumble the ring before lying on the pavement in the popular tourist destination and peering into the grating while his partner looked on in concern.

They called emergency services, who eventually found it – but only after the couple had left without giving their names or contact information. 

Despite the loss, she gave him the answer he was hoping for.

"She said ‘Yes’ – but he was so excited that he dropped the ring in a grate," the NYPD wrote on Twitter. "Our @NYPDSpecialops officers rescued it & would like to return it to the happy couple. Help us find them?" 

They also released a picture of the dropped jewellery, saying: "We have your ring!".

The unidentified man is described as 5’8" or 5’9" with short brown hair and a manicured beard. The woman is described as 5’5" with blonde hair.

More than 350,000 people visit Times Square in midtown Manhattan, known as "The Crossroads of the World," every day.

A Taiwanese student has been charged with theft after her roommate asked the police to carry out a series of costly DNA tests to find out who had taken a £1.50 yoghurt drink out of the communal fridge at their university digs. 

The police investigation and the student who filed the complaint have since been derided by the Taiwanese public, some of whom objected to the waste of taxpayers’ money in carrying out roughly £450 worth of DNA tests on five housemates under suspicion. 

The student at the centre of the unusual whodunnit case has not been named, but lived with five other young women all studying at the Chinese Cultural University in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. 

According to local broadcaster TVBS, she returned home last month to find that her yoghurt drink had been consumed without her permission and the empty bottle thrown in the bin. 

She confronted her housemates and asked the culprit to step forward, but when nobody owned up she took the bottle to the police and asked them to open a formal investigation into theft. 

The police obliged but they could not find fingerprints on the evidence because the container had been wet when handled. The student persisted and asked them to use DNA forensics instead. 

Top 10 | Things you didn't know about Taiwan

She and the other five women were then required to go to the station to submit DNA samples, at a cost of about £76 each, covered by the police department. 

According to the Taiwan News website, the cost of DNA sampling and testing is the most expensive form of evidence collection and the Taipei Police Department’s 2019 budget for forensic investigations is set to soar over £550,000. 

Speaking to the Apple Daily, one police officer described the resort to expensive tests to solve the yoghurt case as “using a cannon to shoot birds”, while Yeh Yu-lan, a former Central Police University professor, called it an “unheard of waste of police and investigative resources.”

Members of the public also expressed their frustration, questioning why the student who sparked such  drama over a trivial matter had not been made to pay for the DNA costs herself. 

The obliging actions of the police have also come under the spotlight. In comments translated by the BBC, one man called Mr Liu expressed what was on many people’s minds: “It is a waste of society’s resources. If I was a police officer, I would have just bought her a bottle to reimburse her,” he said.