A Honduran who killed his former boss and wounded an employee was scheduled to be executed yesterday evening, which would make him the second foreign national executed in Texas this week.
Heliberto Chi was in the US illegally at the time of the 2001 slaying. Lawyers for the Central American country said the fact that Chi was not permitted to contact anyone from his government after he was arrested in California and extradited to Texas was a violation of an international treaty.
The argument is similar to the one raised earlier this week by another condemned Texas prisoner, Mexican-born Jose Medellin, who was executed late on Tuesday night for his part in the gruesome gang rape-slayings of two teenage Houston girls 15 years ago.
Unlike Medellin, however, Chi was not among some 50 death row inmates around the country — all Mexican born — who the International Court of Justice ruled should get new hearings in US courts to determine whether the 1963 Vienna Convention treaty was violated during their arrests. That ruling was prompted by Mexico suing the US in the world court in 2003.
While Medellin’s case was being considered on Tuesday by the US Supreme Court, a judge in Texas refused a request from Chi’s lawyer to withdraw Chi’s execution date until legislation formalizing procedures for reviews of capital cases involving foreign nationals becomes law.
Chi, 29, was spared the death chamber last September when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped his scheduled punishment after the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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