Nation & World Glance
China silences critics of move to make Xi president for life
BEIJING — The day China’s ruling Communist Party unveiled a proposal to allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely as Mao Zedong did a generation ago, Ma Bo was so shaken he couldn’t sleep.
So Ma, a renowned writer, wrote a social media post urging the party to remember the history of unchecked one-man rule that ended in catastrophe.
“History is regressing badly,” Ma thundered in his post. “As a Chinese of conscience, I cannot stay silent!”
Censors silenced him anyway, swiftly wiping his post from the internet.
As China’s rubber-stamp legislature prepares to approve constitutional changes abolishing term limits for the president on Sunday, signs of dissent and biting satire have been all but snuffed out. The stifling censorship leaves intellectuals, young white-collar workers and retired veterans of past political campaigns using roundabout ways to voice their concerns. For many, it’s a foreshadowing of greater political repression ahead.
HS student arrested in Arizona for school shooting threat
TUCSON — Pima County Sheriff’s deputies say a high school student has been arrested following reports of a threat that a shooting would be carried out at Mountain View High School.
The department said Friday that they responded Thursday evening to the reports about texts and posts on social media claiming there would be a shooting at the school the next day.
Sheriff’s detectives working with school officials determined the threat came from a student who wanted to create an excuse for not going to classes Friday.
The department says the student has been charged with issuing threats and intimidation.
Calif. bullet train costs soar to $77B; opening delayed
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The projected cost of California’s bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles has jumped to $77 billion and the completion date has been pushed back four years to 2033, according to a business plan released Friday.
The plan by the California High-Speed Rail Authority presents the latest setbacks for a project that’s been beleaguered by delays and cost overruns since voters first gave it the greenlight in 2008.
It focuses almost entirely on first opening track between San Francisco and the inland Central Valley, a goal the state is still billions of dollars short of financing.