An old Japanese jail in the Northern Mariana Islands is to be excavated in an effort to end decades of speculation about the disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart, officials here said yesterday.
Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan are believed to have been detained in 1937 in the jail which is now a Saipan tourist site.
They were last heard from on July 3 that year when they radioed that they were running low on fuel while Earhart was attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world.
"In the past there had been rumors that Amelia Earhart's plane was shot down and she was held captive by her Japanese captors on suspicion that she was a spy. Later she was burned and buried at the back of the jail," Historic Preservation Office (HPO) director Epiphanio Cabrera said.
The Northern Marianas, a chain of 17 islands about 2,400km south of Tokyo, was administered by Japan from 1914 to 1944 and is now a US territory.
Cabrera said the excavation, which he hopes will unlock the mystery surrounding Earhart's disappearance, is expected to be under way by September.
A year after the Earhart disappeared, a French consul sent a telegram to the US State Department, claiming she was a prisoner on Saipan, and some locals still insist she died in captivity and was buried on the island.
"We will just do proper research on this to close the gap within the rumors. To my knowledge, there hasn't much research and excavation in the area," Cabrera said.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
The dramatic US operation that deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month might have left North Korean leader Kim Jong-un feeling he was also vulnerable to “decapitation,” a former Pyongyang envoy to Havana said. Lee Il-kyu — who served as Pyongyang’s political counselor in Cuba from 2019 until 2023 — said that Washington’s lightning extraction in Caracas was a worst-case scenario for his former boss. “Kim must have felt that a so-called decapitation operation is actually possible,” said Lee, who now works for a state-backed think tank in Seoul. North Korea’s leadership has long accused Washington of seeking to remove it from power
RSS