UNITED KINGDOM
Wildfires follow dry spell
A fire was raging on Ogden moor, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, for a fifth day yesterday. It was one of many heathland fires raging across parts of the Scottish Highlands, Ireland, northern England, and Berkshire after the record-breaking dry spell of last month, with flames fanned by high winds over the holiday weekend. Six people and a dog were airlifted by helicopter in the Torridon mountains on Tuesday. The Environment Agency fears the continuing dry weather could have an adverse impact on wildlife, including fish and plants in and around rivers and lakes where water levels are low.
UNITED KINGDOM
Vendor was killed: inquest
Newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, who died on the fringes of a G20 protest in London in April 2009, was illegally killed, an inquest jury ruled on Tuesday, potentially reopening a case which has crystallized concerns over how police manage violent demonstrations. Tomlinson was shoved to the ground by Police Constable Simon Harwood as he tried to find his way out of the cordon thrown up to contain protests. He collapsed and died moments afterward, and, even though he wasn’t a protester, his case became a cause celebre for those who alleged that police brutalized demonstrators. Officials initially ruled out pursuing a case against Harwood, saying that the conflicting accounts of how Tomlinson died meant that a successful prosecution was unlikely. The Crown Prosecution Service said it would now review the case.
INDIA
US teen guilty in murder
A teenage boy from Pennsylvania has been convicted of murdering his mother by slitting her throat during a holiday in Rajasthan in August last year. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced on Monday to three years in an Indian juvenile detention center for killing Cynthia Iannarelli, 51. He attacked her with a knife, wrapped her body in a sheet and left it on a sand dune before being arrested when trying to board a flight back to the US, a court in the city of Jodhpur heard. Reports from the Reggies Camel Camp resort in Osian said the boy had been demanding that his mother, a business consultant, get back together with his father, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The teen’s lawyers said he would challenge the verdict.
NORTH KOREA
Japanese held over drugs
Pyongyang said yesterday it was holding two Japanese on charges related to drug trafficking and the use of counterfeit currency in its free-trade zone, and had expelled a third. The three were detained in March and had admitted their criminal actions, the official Korean Central News Agency said without explaining why one was deported. The three had entered the free-trade zone to work for Japanese firms, the agency said. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported last month the trio were detained on charges that they hid drugs in canned goods to be exported to China.
SAMOA
Government mulls time shift
The government is reportedly considering switching timezones so the island nation falls to the west of the international dateline. Samoa sits to the east of the international dateline — which runs through the middle of the Pacific — meaning that it is 11 hours behind GMT and is one of the last places on Earth to see out the day. The time difference puts it 21 hours behind eastern Australia and 23 behind New Zealand, its two major trading partners.
MEXICO
Mine blast kills three
Rescue workers dug three bodies out of a coal mine in the northern part of the country and scrambled early yesterday to reach 11 other miners still missing after a suspected gas explosion caused a cave-in. A teenager who was working outside the mine, but was caught in the blast, had to have both his arms amputated, investigators said. Labor Minister Javier Lozano said the death toll from the accident could rise, in a message on the micro-blogging website Twitter late on Tuesday in which he confirmed the three deaths. “The prognosis is not encouraging,” he said. Rescuers had been racing against the clock to dig out the miners after an explosion at 8am on Tuesday left them trapped about 50m underground on the site in the state of Coahuila, near the US border.
AUSTRIA
Court rules against abductee
A lawyer said authorities have rejected a compensation claim from a woman who was held captive for eight-and-a-half-years by a man who tormented her both physically and verbally and locked her in a dungeon. Natascha Kampusch was snatched off a Vienna street when she was 10 and held prisoner until she fled in August 2006. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide within hours of her escape. Kampusch and others claim authorities didn’t properly handle the probe into her disappearance. In an account of her captivity published last year, Kampusch said she was repeatedly beaten, starved and forced to do housework half-naked at the mercy of a paranoid man, who admired Hitler and wanted her to call him “maestro” and “my lord.”
PARAGUAY
Six escape in jailbreak
A group of heavily armed men broke into a maximum security prison and liberated six prisoners, all alleged members of a major Brazilian drug cartel, police said on Tuesday. Two prison guards and four women, who were visiting inmates at the time of the breakout, all believed to be accomplices, were detained for questioning, police said. The breakout took place on Tuesday morning at the Pedro Juan Caballero prison, located 550km north-east of Asuncion, on the border with Brazil. The region is considered the main pathway for marijuana and cocaine heading to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s most populous cities.
UNITED STATES
Retailer sued for spying
A couple has filed a class action lawsuit against retailer Aaron’s, alleging it spied on them through a Web cam installed on a rent-to-own laptop in violation of privacy laws. Brian and Crystal Byrd of Wyoming said the computer was mistakenly listed in default in December last year, two months after they claim to have paid it off, when an Aaron’s representative came to their home. The couple alleges that while trying to reclaim the computer, the representative showed them a Web cam image of Brian Byrd using the laptop, according to a statement by their lawyers on Monday.
UNITED STATES
Police tase nude runner
A marathon runner who stripped during a race stunned authorities, who returned the favor, giving him a jolt with a Taser, local media reported on Tuesday. Brett Henderson, 35, was arrested for “public indecency” during the Flying Pig Marathon on Sunday, the Cincinnati Inquirer wrote. When police saw that Henderson was missing his shorts, they ordered him into their car, but he kept running, leading them to break out the Taser and subdue him, the report said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese