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Beijing has long been about the closest thing to an ally that Pyongyang enjoys, but the seizure of a Chinese fishing boat by unidentified North Koreans has threatened to put an already tenuous relationship on even shakier ground.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei was quoted by The New York Times as making it fairly clear that his government was not happy about the development.

China, he said, is "demanding that it properly deal with the matter as quickly as possible and effectively safeguard the legitimate rights of the Chinese fishermen, as well as the safety of their lives and property."

The incident comes close on the heels of North Korea conducting a series of test firings of "short-range projectiles," including short-range missiles and possibly rocket artillery over the weekend.

According to The Times:

"The announcement about the captured boat promptly drew an outcry from Chinese media and citizens online, some of whom have already expressed increasing impatience with North Korea over its nuclear weapons ambitions and threats to the region. ...

"The Chinese media reports said that the boat was seized May 5, with 16 men aboard, and that the North Korean authorities demanded payment of 600,000 renminbi, or about $98,000, to release them and the vessel, apparently on the grounds that it was fishing in waters claimed by North Korea. The deadline for payment was Sunday, the Beijing Times newspaper said.

"The owner of the boat [Yu Xuejun] drew public attention to its capture through messages on Tencent Weibo, a Chinese microblog service. And on Monday he issued a message saying that he feared his crew had been beaten."

Iranians choose a new president next month, and one thing Iran's leaders are intent on avoiding is a repeat of the massive street protests that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election in 2009.

The sponsors of those protests, known as the Green Movement, have been effectively silenced inside Iran, but not online. The heroine of a graphic novel about the violent suppression of dissent in 2009 is now launching a virtual campaign of her own.

Her name is Zahra, a wife and mother in Tehran who starred in the 2010 online graphic novel Zahra's Paradise. Zahra's Paradise happens to be the name of a vast cemetery in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where Iranians from ayatollahs to war veterans to student dissidents are buried.

Readers were riveted by Zahra's struggle to find her son Mehdi, who had disappeared during a street protest. As with many real-life Tehran mothers, Zahra's search ended at a graveside in Zahra's Paradise.

The Web comic became a global phenomenon and was translated into 15 languages. Now, Zahra's creators and the human rights group United for Iran have launched a new storyline in which she runs for president.

In the panel below, Zahra's best friend, Miriam, a caustic critic of the government who calls Iran's clerical leaders "clowns" presiding over a circus, urges Zahra to enter the campaign, despite Zahra's sighs that it won't bring her dead son back:

Pakistanis have coped with – even rioted – over the country's frequent power cuts. Now, the government is feeling their impact, too. The country's caretaker prime minister has banned air conditioners in government offices and instituted a dress code for civil servants. Among his recommendations: No socks.

"There shall be no more use of air-conditioners in public offices till such time that substantial improvement in the energy situation takes place," a Cabinet directive, cited by Reuters, said.

The News newspaper reports:

"The dress code includes white or light coloured (beige, light grey, sky blue, off-white, cream) shirt/bush shirt (full-sleeved or half sleeved) with light coloured (as prescribed for shirt) trouser or shalwar kameez with waist coat, moccasins (shoes without laces) or sandals (shoes with straps) without socks."

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Stephen King says his next book, Joyland, will be available only in print. He recently told The Wall Street Journal: "[L]et people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one." Interestingly, King was actually one of the first mainstream authors to go digital: Back in 2000, Riding the Bullet was released as the first mass market ebook. A New York Times article from that year discussing the quaintly described "Internet-only novella" quotes one prominent literary agent as saying, "That's a fellow sitting up in Maine having fun, but it's not a way to run a business."

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka takes on Western critics who call the late Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe the "father of African literature" in an interview with SaharaReporters: "It legitimizes their ignorance, their parlous knowledge, enables them to circumscribe, then adopt a patronizing approach to African literatures and creativity. Backed by centuries of their own recorded literary history, they assume the condescending posture of midwiving an infant entity." Achebe died in March.

Raymond Maxwell, one of four State Department officials disciplined following the attack in Benghazi, Libya, expresses his thoughts on the scandal with some vitriolic poetry. One poem, quoted by CBS, reads "The Queen's Henchmen / request the pleasure of your company / at a Lynching - / to be held / at 23rd and C Streets NW [State Dept. building] ...A blood sacrifice- / to divert the hounds- / to appease the gods- / to cleanse our filth and /satisfy our guilty consciences..." Subtle.

The Australian airline Qantas is commissioning novels that supposedly last the precise lengths of their most popular flights. The project, a collaboration with publisher Hachette, is called "Stories for Every Journey."

Judith Thurman considers the legacy of Soren Kierkegaard for The New Yorker: "Either/Or...ought really to be subtitled Neither."

Children's book author Bernard Waber died on Monday, according to his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lyle, a crocodile that lives in a bathtub, was the star of Waber's two most famous books, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile and The House on East 88th Street.

In an interview with Guernica magazine, Claire Messud talks about making the protagonist of her latest novel, The Woman Upstairs, a female "fury." She says: "I always loved reading the ranters and the ranters are all boys, and I thought, well, what would it be like?" (You can also listen to novelist Lionel Shriver discuss Messud on NPR's All Things Considered.)