Schedium

Statement by Chengbu Public Securtity Bureau (Weibo)  A Chinese citizen from Chengbu Miao Autonomous County, in China's Hunan Province, was detained for a week after he altered the words of a government propaganda poster.  According to Chinese media reports, on December 17 the government of Chengbu's Xiyan Town put up propaganda posters that read: "Gluttonous and lazy people are shameful, being poor is not glorious" (好吃懒做很可耻、贫穷落后不光荣), as part of a government propaganda campaign to reduce poverty.  After seeing the posters, a 34-year-old man surnamed Tang altered the words to: "Gluttonous and lazy people are glorious, being poor is not shameful." Passers-by photographed the modified poster and shared the pictures online.  On January 5, the Chengbu Public Security Bureau released a statement on its Weibo account, announcing that Mr. Tang had been detained on charges of violating Article 25, Section 1, of the Public Security Administrat...

Frankfurt Police HQ (by Magadan  via Wikimedia Commons) Policemen in the German city of Frankfurt have been accused of threatening a lawyer and exchanging far-right and Nazi content in a chat group.  On 2 August 2018 lawyer Seda Başay-Yildiz received an anonymous fax signed by "NSU 2.0." The message described her as a "lousy Turkish pig" ( miese Türkensau ) and threatened to "slaughter" ( schlachten ) her two-year-old daughter. The authors of the fax knew not only her private address but also  her daughter's name. She reported the incident to the police.  Başay-Yildiz was representing a victim of the NSU - National Socialist Underground - a far-right terrorist group responsible for 10 murders and various terror attacks. The trial of NSU members lasted from May 2013 to July 2018 and resulted in 5 convictions.  According to the Tagesspiegel , in October investigators searched the 1. police department in Frankfurt and found out t...

(photo source: Wikipedia ) In order to take a a breath of fresh air, a mainland Chinese traveller opened the emergency exit of a China Southern Airlines plane during take-off, causing a 1-hour delay.  According to media reports, the incident happened on Wednesday 9 at Chengdu Airport. A plane of China Southern Airlines bound to Urumqi was preparing to take off when a passenger, surnamed Nan, suddenly opened the emergency exit . Cold air immediately entered the aircraft causing panic among the 130 passengers on board.  The man had been allocated seat number 41A, next to the emergency exit. Later he explained that he felt it was stuffy inside the plane and he wanted to take a breath of fresh air. The airport ground crew rushed to the aircraft to close the emergency exit from the outside. Afterwards, they took down the passenger's personal details and carried out a safety check. The plane took off one hour after the scheduled departure time.   This is o...

On February 6 a 6.4 magnitude  earthquake hit Tainan , a city in southern Taiwan. The quake struck just before 04:00 local time, killing at least 23 people and destroying several buildings. Over 100 people are missing. First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to all who lost their beloved ones. As I will write in a future post, I recently lost my father, so I know very well how it feels. In this post I would just like to write a few words about a problem I have noticed in some Taiwanese cities. One day I was talking with a German guy who lived in Taipei for a year. He was "complaining" that all the earthquakes he had experienced in Taiwan were small. When I said that earthquakes are nothing to laugh about, he argued that buildings in Taipei are earthquake-resistant and there was no reason to be worried even if the earth trembled. Well, I was quite surprised that he thought so, because I have seen loads of buildings in Taipei who look extre...

This morning, on the 16th days since the beginning of the Occupy Central protests, the police have gathered at the sites occupied by demostrators and are trying to remove the barricades. Apparently, the policemen are prepared to use teargas. Hong Kong police try to clear road barricades as protests enter 16th day http://t.co/CQJwLxpWay — SCMP News (@SCMP_News) October 13, 2014 Hong Kong police start clearing protest barricades: Occupy Central http://t.co/IHe3757Y9H — Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 13, 2014

Yesterday the Beijing police confirmed that Jaycee Chan ( 房祖名 ; Fang Zuming), the son of martial arts film star Jackie Chan , and Taiwanese Actor Ke Zhendong (柯震東, also spelt Ko Chen-tung in Taiwan's Wade-Giles system) were arrested on August 14 in the Chinese capital on charges of drug use.  The 23-year-old Ke Zhendong had achieved notoriety on both sides of the Taiwan Strait with the 2011 romantic film You Are the Apple of My Eye (那些年，我們一起追的女孩, literally "Those Years, The Girl We Chased Together"). Ke is accused of drug consumption and faces 14 days in prison.  Jaycee Chan, however, is accused of a much more serious crime. The police found in his Beijing residence 100 grams of marijuana which was probably destined for other people's consumption. He faces a prison sentence of up to 4 years.