Results tagged “terrorist”

Police said yesterday they had cracked down on a Shanghai terrorist cell planning violence at Olympic soccer matches in the city. Shanghai’s Olympic security office head Cheng Jiulong said police, who were put on “crisis” level several days ago, had learned of several international terrorist organizations and staged raids successful in arresting potential attackers. Information not mentioned in Jiulong's report included how many people were arrested, when they were taken into custody and where they are being held.

Last weekend, we told you that Yahoo! is now apologizing for not telling the full truth to Congress at the February 2006 hearing where Yahoo! was taken to task for its role in the conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao. Now both Republicans and Democrats have launched scathing attacks on Yahoo. San Mateo Democrat Tom Lantos has called Yahoo "moral pygmies", and New Jersey Republican Chris Smith compared Yahoo’s cooperation with the Chinese government to companies that cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

More than a dozen prominent Singapore celebrities have come out in support of a new parliamentary petition to repeal Section 377A in the city-state's Penal Code which outlaws “acts of gross indecency” between men by appearing in a Youtube video uploaded recently.

Elsewhere - Indian-born billionaire Lakshmi Mittal - the fifth richest man in the world - has emerged as a contender to buy Birmingham, while Arsenal faces a takeover bid from an Arab tycoon Mohammed Al Hashimi who was a partner in a £450million bid to buy Liverpool. In the meanwhile, ousted billionaire Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, is reportedly poised to buy English football's Manchester City, although the Bank of Thailand said it has not received a money transfer request from Thaksin. Are Asians going to take over the English Premier League someday?

The city is getting ready to purchase three police helicopters, a security improvement leading up to the 2010 World Expo. The Shanghai force decided to go with Eurocopter instead of a domestic manufacture because, as the PSB director put it, ""Flying over Shanghai, a densely populated city with about 20 million residents, demands absolute security insurance." Here's more:

For most of the day yesterday, we here at Shanghaiist were wondering if we should post anything about the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech, a university in the United States. On the surface, the answer should have been an easy "no" — Blacksburg, Virginia, is nowhere near Shanghai. But news started to trickle in about the suspected killer: He was Asian, possibly Chinese. And then, yesterday morning, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed posted a story labeled "exclusive" that started out like this:

Are you in the Chinese stock market? No, this isn’t a reprint of the post from last month. We ask because yesterday, both the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges dropped about nine percent, registering their biggest decline in a decade, surpassed only by the sell off the day after late reformist leader Deng Xiaoping died in 1997.

For more del.icio.us links, visit the Shanghaiist Contribute page, which is updated throughout the day.

It seems that charming Shanghai has become the creative and commercial object of affection for yet another famous Tom (after Cruise and Friedman, of course) and is now featured as one of the backdrops for Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The fourth title in the Splinter Cell series is newly available on the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, and the PC, and bears the name and coveted approval of noted author, bass fisherman and Sith Lord Tom Clancy.

"Xinjiang was know as 'Western Region' in history. It has been a component part of our unified and multi-nationality country for more than 2000 years. From 60 BC, when the Han dynasty instituted the Military Viceroy's Office in the Western Region, Xinjiang was under the direct jurisdiction of the government of the Western Han Dynasty." So we learned from, Xinjiang Information, a delightful little instruction-set from Xinjiang Learning Press. Well obviously, these guys haven't read it yet, or else they would not release such wrong-headed videos as the one issued November 7 via the al-Fajr Information Center. Evidently shooting from the same studios that brought the world such terrorist hits as the as-Sahab and Labik videos from Afghanistan, this group seeks to incite Jihad in Xinjiang Province, or "Eastern Turkestan" as it is called in the video. Although the scope of SCO has expanded since it was founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, combating the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism was its original raison d'etre. It seems everyone from GM to jihad wants a piece of China.

Photo by 2 dogs taken from the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.

The video clip about Tong's case was "useful in helping us protect state secrets,'' the Sichuan Population and Family Planning Commission said in a July 31 statement on its Web site.

"Minor axis of evil" -- an elliptical (pun intended) statement by which we really mean China consorts with terrorists. Yes folks, this is what the US State Department spokesman implied through his comments regarding Iran's presence at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting. According to this spokesman, inviting Iran over casts doubt on the SCO's self-proclaimed mission of combating terrorism and extremism in the region.

The wonderful and great things awaiting Americans -- no, the world! -- since the U.S. government's murder of Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have begun! We got this email from American Citizen Services an hour ago:

Do you remember where you were on June 17, 1994 -- the day that O.J. Simpson was involved in one of the greatest high-speed (or was it low-speed?) car chases of all time? We're sure that most of you Americans out there do -- and what better way to celebrate this historic event than with a bonded nickel souvenir statue? More to the point: The Olympics are only two years away, and the Beijing cops are undergoing all kinds of special training for this event, much of it which involves possible high-speed chase scenarios:

Not long ago, Shanghaiist reported on a possible (and false) terrorist threat in China. Now with the largest civilian shelter built in Minhang district, maybe some of us can stop panicking and move on with our lives. Well, maybe 8,000-10,000 of us.

Shanghaiist recently caught wind of an article in the magazine Fast Company called "The Gucci-Killers", which we at first thought referred to some obscure antiglobalization terrorist group but was actually an article about the up-and-coming luxury fashion and lifestyle brand Shanghai Tang. We have to say that this article rubbed us the wrong way because of the damn near breathless way in which it describes Shanghai and China. For example, take this first paragraph:

British PM Tony Blair came out of his visit to China a big winner after receiving China's backing for a United Nations Security Council resolution against terrorist incitement. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on London, Blair pushed for new laws that would make public or private statements that indirectly incited terrorism an offense punishable by law. The new UN resolution, which is still in the works, is of the same drift -- it gives countries a greater mandate to stop terrorist incitement within their own borders.

At least seven Four explosions rocked London's public transportation system during rush hour this morning in an apparent terrorist attack. Eyewitness accounts are horrifying and all too familiar. Visit Londonist for details and updates.