On May 13, Beijing lawyer Li Chunfu went to the southwestern city of Chongqing with a colleague to meet with the family of a man who died in a labor camp. While meeting with the family, Li and lawyer Zhang Kai were detained by police. Li was chained to a chair and punched, while Zhang, also roughed up during their arrest, was locked in a cage
Tag Archives: family
In Iran, Rival Regime Factions Play a High-Stakes Game of Chicken
As the sun set on the fourth day of turmoil over Iran’s disputed election result, the political conflict looked less like a “Tehran spring” challenge to the Islamic regime than a high-stakes game of chicken among its rival factions.
Layman-turned-relics hunter rescues China’s antiquities
Searching through the rubble of demolition sites across the 800-year-old capital of China, Li Songtang has unearthed a treasure trove of ancient relics. They include gate piers depicting Mongolians and the Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty, a Buddhist carving that is more than 1,000 years old, and a Ming dynasty marble fish water tank. Li Songtang is neither museum curator nor antiques expert, but an ordinary man who did not want to see China’s rich history lost to modernization during the late 1970s.
Teen charged in Miami’s 19 serial cat killings
A teenager is being held on 19 counts of animal cruelty linked to a month-long killing spree of pet cats in the Miami area, police said. Tyler Hayes Weinman, 18, also is charged with 19 counts of improper disposal of dead animals and four counts of burglary, police said
Anti-war campaigners slam ‘secret’ Iraq probe
Anti-war protesters have criticized a decision by the UK government to hold an investigation into Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war behind closed doors. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons on Monday the inquiry into the war would hear evidence in private so witnesses can be “as candid as possible.” He added that it would be held along the lines of the Franks inquiry into Britain’s war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the early 1980s.
Locked away: Kenya’s health anguish
Daniel Mungai’s family keeps him locked in a room in a wooden shack that is just big enough to fit a bed, a cupboard, Daniel and his wheel-chair.
Interview with 99 Drams of Whiskey Author Kate Hopkins
People will do crazy things for the devil’s brew. Take the guy who, in 2005, spent more than $70,000 on a single bottle of Dalmore 62 Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky — one of 12 bottles in the world — and then proceeded to consume it, in one sitting, with a few friends and an English bartender. It was this very story that inspired food blogger Kate Hopkins to trek across the globe, from a 200-year-old distillery in Scotland to Maker’s Mark House and Lounge in Kentucky, for her first book, 99 Drams of Whiskey.
Will Smith takes on ‘extra’ duties to support wife’s new TV show
Before Jada Pinkett Smith took the role of producer and star of TNT’s "HawthoRNe," she made sure her family was fine with her being away from her mother and wife duties during filming.
After 7 years at Gitmo, resettled Uyghurs grateful for freedom
Two of four Uyghurs relocated to Bermuda after seven years of detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, denied Friday that they had ever been terrorists, and expressed gratitude toward President Obama for working to free them. Asked what he would say to someone who accused him of being a terrorist, one of the men, Kheleel Mamut, told CNN’s Don Lemon, “I am no terrorist; I have not been terrorist. I will never be terrorist.
Amanda Knox Testifies: The Murder Trial That Has Gripped Italy
Amanda Knox is a riddle. The expatriate American student has been the mysterious, ambivalent Mona Lisa face plastered across television, websites and newspapers since a few days after Halloween 2007.