NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
Taiwan activist: China sentenced a Taiwanese activist to five years in prison Tuesday for holding online political lectures and helping the families of jailed dissidents in a conviction demonstrating how Beijing’s harshest crackdown on human rights in decades has extended beyond the Chinese mainland. The trial of Lee Ming-che was also China’s first known criminal prosecution of a nonprofit group worker since Beijing passed a law last year tightening controls over foreign nongovernmental organizations.
Bali volcano: The international airport on the Indonesian island of Bali remained closed for a third day due to an erupting volcano. Airport spokesman Arie Ahsannurohim said Wednesday that volcanic ash has not been detected at the airport, but observations showed it has reached an altitude of 25,000 feet and was being blown toward the airport. Tuesday’s closing affected more than 440 flights carrying more than 59,500 passengers. Mount Agung has been at the highest alert level since Monday and has spewed clouds of ash for days.
Prosecutor killed: Authorities in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz are investigating the murder of a sex crimes prosecutor in front of her office. The Veracruz state attorney’s office says that the prosecutor had arrived at work Monday at 9 a.m. when she was shot. The 35-year-old woman was part of a unit specializing in family violence and human trafficking in the municipality of Panuco in northern Veracruz. U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson condemned the killing of Yendi Guadalupe Torres Castellanos via Twitter. The murder came one day after Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes attended the funerals of the mayor of Ixhuatlan de Madero and his wife, who were killed by gunmen on Friday.
Fake drugs: About 11 percent of medicines in developing countries are counterfeit and likely responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of children from diseases like malaria and pneumonia every year, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said Tuesday. It’s the first attempt by the U.N. health agency to assess the problem. Experts reviewed 100 studies involving more than 48,000 medicines. Drugs for treating malaria and bacterial infections accounted for nearly 65 percent of fake medicines. WHO’s director-general said the problem mostly affects poor countries. Between 72,000 and 169,000 children may be dying from pneumonia every year after receiving bad drugs. Counterfeit medications might be responsible for an additional 116,000 deaths from malaria mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, according to scientists at the University of Edinburgh and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine commissioned by the WHO.
Ruins at risk: Thousands of historic sites, or “huacas,” from Peru’s Inca past are being crowded out — and sometimes destroyed — as new roads, schools, residential neighborhoods and stadiums are built to meet the population’s growing demands. High-rise apartment buildings tower around one site. Highway traffic barrels through a pair of tunnels newly burrowed under an adobe palace at a 900-year-old cemetery. One of the few well-preserved pyramids sits across from the mansion of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, highlighting the creeping pace of urbanization in the bustling capital, Lima. An estimated 46,000 precolonial sites dot Peru’s landscape. About 400 of them are in Lima, home to the biggest number of precolonial archaeological zones of any city in South America.