UNITED KINGDOM
Reggae star dies during raid
Media are reporting reggae star Smiley Culture has died during a police drugs raid on his home. The London-born musician — whose real name is David Emmanuel — reportedly died from self-inflicted wounds on Tuesday when police officers swooped on his home in east Surrey, Britain’s Press Association said. The reggae singer had appeared before magistrates in September last year charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine. Britain’s police watchdog said on Tuesday it had been called in to investigate an incident during which a 48-year-old man apparently suffered a stab wound and died. The watchdog said formal identification has not yet taken place. Culture shot to fame in the 1980s with hits including Cockney Translation and Police Officer.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mega-lobster dodges pot
One of the biggest and oldest lobsters ever caught in Britain has been saved from the pot and will live out the rest of its long life in an aquarium. The massive crustacean measures close to 1m in length and weighs more than 4kg. “He’s a fantastic specimen and by his size alone he has got to be at least 50 years old,” said Lindsay Holloway of the Blue Reef aquarium in Portsmouth, southern England where the lobster now lives. “He is an amazing creature and it’s quite an achievement to have reached such an impressive age,” he said. The lobster was caught by an angler fishing for sole. Lobsters are among the planet’s oldest inhabitants with fossil remains found dating back more than 100 million years. They are also extremely long-lived with some reaching ages of over 80 years. The aquarium said the heaviest recorded crustacean is an Atlantic lobster nicknamed Mike who tipped the scales at 19kg.
UNITED KINGDOM
Tot treated for alcoholism
Hospital authorities say they have treated a three-year-old child for alcoholism. The Heart of England NHS Trust that runs three hospitals in central England confirmed on Tuesday that a child had been treated by medical staff after being given alcohol regularly. The trust revealed the data in response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act by a newspaper, which requested data on underage drinking.
Latvia
Latvians honor SS fighters
Hundreds of Latvians gathered in downtown Riga yesterday to commemorate World War II veterans who fought on the side of Nazi Germany in Waffen SS detachments. A small group of mainly ethnic Russians also assembled nearby to protest the ceremony, which they claim glorifies fascism and discredits the Soviet Union’s enormous sacrifice in defeating Nazi Germany. A large police contingent was on hand to keep the two sides apart. Participants in yesterday’s ceremony, including a small number of veterans, were due to attend a church service and then proceed to the Freedom Monument, where they were to lay flowers and sing patriotic songs.
UNITED KINGDOM
Clock winds up London
A giant clock counting down to the 2012 London Olympics stopped for several hours on Tuesday, less than a day after being unveiled in Trafalgar Square. The digital clock, which is made by Olympic sponsor Omega, was stuck at 500 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, 56 seconds until workers tried to fix the problem. The clock was fixed several hours later. “It’s one of those windups set to test us, but it’s working again,’’ London organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe said.
NIGERIA
Opposition cries ‘sabotage’
The House of Assembly has ordered a probe into a ram-and-goat-filled airstrip that forced a plane carrying an opposition candidate to crash land. The House said on Tuesday they would investigate last week’s incident at the rural northern Bauchi airport. Opposition Representative Olufemi Gbajabiamila criticized the government for calling it a force majeure. He said: “force majeure means an act of God ... This was not an act of God, it was an act of negligence.” The vice-presidential candidate for Action Congress of Nigeria was unhurt, but the plane was damaged. The main opposition party claimed “sabotage.” The airstrip is unfenced though funds had been approved to fence it. Animals often wander across rural Nigerian airstrips.
UNITED STATES
California sued in Sikh case
The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the state of California alleging that a Sikh inmate who refused to trim his beard for religious reasons was unfairly disciplined. Sukhjinder Basra, serving time for a drug offense, has said that guards told him he violated a rule prohibiting inmates from growing facial hair longer than 1.25cm. As punishment, Basra said he was ordered to perform extra prison duties and spend 10 days confined to his bunk. He also lost 30 days of credit for good behavior. Sikhs are required by their religion to wear unshorn hair wrapped in a turban and a beard.
UNITED STATES
Nude run canceled
The president of Tufts University in Massachusetts has put an end to the student tradition of running around nude to mark the end of the fall semester. President Lawrence Bacow said in an op-ed piece in the student newspaper on Monday that the Naked Quad Run has become too dangerous because of excessive alcohol consumption, slippery sidewalks and dangerously low temperatures that put student health at risk. He also noted that police consider it illegal. He says two students who participated in December were hospitalized with high blood-alcohol levels. The run dates to the 1970s. Disappointed students say it was a way to blow off steam at the end of the semester.
UNITED STATES
‘Vampire’ sentenced
A man has been sentenced to three years of probation for stabbing a man who refused to let him suck his blood. Maricopa County Superior Court says 24-year-old Aaron Homer pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was sentenced on Monday. The Arizona Republic reports 25-year-old Robert Maley once let his roommates suck his blood, but when Maley refused a second time on Oct. 4, he was stabbed. Chandler police said Maley lived with Homer and his girlfriend. Maley said the two men were into “vampire stuff.”
UNITED STATES
Man injects wife with poison
Police say a man in New York injected his wife with a poisonous liquid, then drank some himself and later died. The 35-year-old woman, Erlendy Flores, is in a coma in critical condition. Police said the couple had argued on Sunday and the woman spent the night at her sister’s apartment in the same Bronx building. The next day, police say, she returned to her apartment to collect her things, while her brother waited outside for her. Police say the husband, 41-year-old Flavio Godoy, stuck a syringe in Flores’ buttocks while she was bent over packing her clothes. He then drank the same liquid from a cup. Authorities are examining the liquid.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the