Rap song contest amid crackdown
BEIJING: Canadian businessman Michael Spavor, who has worked with North Korea, is being investigated on suspicion of harming China’s security, China said yesterday, just days after a former Canadian diplomat was detained in an escalating diplomatic row.
The state security bureau in Dandong, which borders North Korea, has been investigating Spavor since last week, an official news site for the Liaoning province government says. It gives no further details.
On Monday, former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who works for the International Crisis Group, was detained in Beijing. State media in China has reported that Kovrig is being investigated on the same charges as Spavor. | PARIS: French authorities have issued a wanted poster and are calling for witnesses amid a massive manhunt for the suspected shooter nearly 24 hours after a deadly attack at the Strasbourg Christmas market.
Three people were killed in the shootings on Tuesday night and a dozen others were injured.
A photo of Cherif Chekatt, 29, who was born in Strasbourg, was distributed publicly on Wednesday.
The poster warns: “Dangerous individual, above all do not intervene.” It asks anyone with information that could help locate him to contact authorities.
Hundreds of police and soldiers were combing Strasbourg and the border with Germany in a search of him.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told lawmakers that Chekatt, a French citizen, has had run-ins with police since the age of 10 and his first conviction at age 13. He had been convicted 27 times, mostly in France but also in Switzerland and Germany, for crimes including armed robbery.
He had been flagged for extremism and was on a watch list. | THE Russian parliament announced a rap song competition yesterday amid a crackdown on contemporary music that evoked Soviet-era censorship of the arts.
A dozen rappers have had their shows cancelled recently after warnings from officials who claim that their music promotes the wrong values. At least three musicians have been detained. In a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, the State Duma announced it would run a competition for the best rap song – but it has to be on the subject of travel in Russia. The winner, according to lawmaker Mikhail Degtyarev, will win a trip around Russian cities.
“We want to give a platform for open discussion and highlight the opportunities as well as drawbacks of this or that town,” he said. “If, for example, there is a bad road near a tourist attraction, there should be a video about it.”
Rap has emerged as one of the most popular music genres among Russia’s youth – and a target for Russian authorities – thanks to its frank portrayal of daily realities and scathing criticism of the government.
Last month, a rapper known as Husky, whose videos have garnered more than six million views on YouTube, was arrested for staging an impromptu performance after his show was shut down in the southern city of Krasnodar. |