MEXICO
Three kids killed in attack
Three young children were killed on Thursday in Ciudad Juarez after attackers threw a Molotov cocktail into their house, their mother told officials. “They threw the Molotov cocktail through the window that faces the street,” the mother of the children — aged four, three and one — told investigators. She was inside the house at the time of the attack, but authorities said she managed to escape the blaze with her hair and clothes on fire. Her husband was at work when the attack took place. Firefighters have so far found the bodies of two children in the house, both underneath a bed. Ciudad Juarez is considered the most violent city in the country, with more than 3,100 homicides last year.
UNITED STATES
World’s oldest man dies
Walter Bruening, a retired rail worker who was the world’s oldest man, has died at the age of 114. Breuning died on Thursday of natural causes at a Great Falls hospital in Montana, Stacia Kirby, spokeswoman for the Rainbow Senior Living retirement home where he has lived since 1980, told local media. Breuning attributed his long life to eating only two meals a day for the past 35 years. “I think you should push back from the table when you’re still hungry,” he told the Great Falls Tribune newspaper in 2009. “You get in the habit of not eating at night, and you realize how good you feel. If you could just tell people not to eat so darn much,” he said. “I am deeply saddened by the loss of my dear friend and a great Montanan,” Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer said in a statement, the Tribune reported.
AUSTRALIA
Woman escapes jail term
A woman who left her maggot-encrusted mother to waste away in a heap of her own feces on their kitchen floor escaped a jail term yesterday. Polish-born Mary Pyrczak, 51, left her mother, 72, with gangrene, maggots in one of her feet and her toes blackened and mummified, on the floor of their Melbourne home in November 2008. Pyrczak, who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and a long-standing phobia of medical professionals, pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Discovered in a filthy, stained gown and covered with blankets when Pyrczak finally called an ambulance, Kateryna Pyrczak was stiff, emaciated and unable to talk. She died in hospital later the same day. Describing her crime as one of “omission rather than commission,” Supreme Court judge Paul Coghlan said he had decided not to jail Pyrczak and instead suspended her three-year sentence. Psychiatric evidence showed that Pyrczak had been unemployed since 1996, had no motive to kill her mother and could not cope with the prospect of her dying.
CHINA
Police hunts for killer of 10
Police are searching for a bathhouse and car wash owner, who is suspected of killing 10 people in the city of Anshan in Liaoning Province, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. “Ten people were found dead at a bathhouse and a neighboring car wash” in a village near the city of Anshan, Xinhua reported, citing local police. The suspect, Zhou Yuxin, 33, was still at large, said the report, issued late in the evening. The dead included Zhou’s wife, son and father, as well as workers in the two businesses he owned. The report did not say how they were killed during the murder rampage that began on Wednesday night and went into Thursday morning. It said “extramarital affairs were possibly behind the killing,” but did not elaborate.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of