USA-CHINA A judge has dismissed charges against the wife of a Chinese billionaire accused of taking part in a scheme to steal trade secrets from U.S. corn companies. The order signed Tuesday instructs the government to return Mo Yun’s passport, meaning she can return to China. Investigators allege that Mo, her brother and five other Chinese nationals were working for a seed subsidiary of China-based DBN Group when they stole seeds from Iowa cornfields and shipped them out of the country in 2011 and 2012.
AUSTRALIA An Australian man was accused yesterday of allowing seven men to sexually abuse his 13-year-old daughter over the past two years, with police charging all eight men with more than 500 child sex offenses. Western Australia police arrested the men after receiving a tip-off from the public. Police say the father knew all of the men, and arranged for them to meet his daughter and subsequently assault her when she was between the ages of 11 and 13. The father is also accused of assaulting the girl.
INDIA Few countries sentence more people to death than India. Though well over a thousand people have been sent to death row this century, just three have been executed. Yakub Abdul Razak Memon will soon be the fourth. Jailed for his supporting role in the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people, he has made many appeals and is scheduled to be hanged today.
Belgium The European Union is looking into complaints that Disneyland Paris is unfairly charging different prices for consumers depending on what nation the request comes from. Even if charging different prices in different member states for the same product is not necessarily illegal, the reasons for doing so must be clear and transparent, said EU spokeswoman Lucia Caudet yesterday. She said the EU Commission has “received complaints about Disneyland Paris that we are now checking.” Complaints addressed to the EU have come from consumers from Britain, Germany and Croatia, among others.
TURKISH jets hit Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq overnight and the government said strikes would continue until the rebels lay down their arms, despite calls yesterday by the pro-Kurdish opposition for an immediate end to the violence and the resumption of peace efforts. Turkey’s air raids against the Kurdish rebels, which came at the same time as a crackdown on ISIS, are reigniting a 30-year conflict with the insurgents and leave a two-year-old, fragile peace process in pieces.
IRAQ Back-to-back suicide attacks targeting Iraqi security forces near the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi yesterday killed at least 12 troops, officials said, as the government pressed on with efforts to reclaim territory under the extremists’ control. The suicide bombers rammed explosives-laden Humvees into forces deployed outside of the University of Ramadi complex, two Iraqi officials told The Associated Press.
FRANCE-IRAN France sought yesterday to re-launch diplomatic ties with Iran in the hope of boosting business in the country, following a key nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers reached earlier this month. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called his one-day visit to Iran “an important trip” and tried to soften tensions created by France’s hard line on the nuclear issue.
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