UNITED STATES
Library lifts Twain book ban
A Massachusetts library has put the Mark Twain work Eve’s Diary back on the shelf more than a century after it was banned. The Charlton Public Library’s trustees this week unanimously voted to return the book to circulation, reversing the board’s 1906 decision to ban the 1905 short story. Trustee Richard Whitehead said the move was made to coincide with the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. The story was written from the perspective of the biblical Adam and Eve. It was banned because trustee Frank Wakefield objected to nude illustrations of Eve.
ITALY
‘Living statue’ ban mulled
Culture officials in Rome are mulling a ban on “living statues,” arguing that dressing up in costume and standing on the street to solicit spare change has no artistic merit, media reported on Friday. “Living statues demonstrate no artistic activity, to the extent that they can’t be compared to mimes, and they amount to a veritable racket,” said Federico Mollicone, deputy culture head in Rome’s mayorship. The proposed ban is part of a broader bill from Mollicone’s office, which aims to regulate activity on Rome’s streets, reports said. Under the proposal, street musicians could have their instruments or speakers confiscated, and “deafening” music would be banned after 10pm.
UNITED STATES
Former drug czar jailed
A federal judge in Miami on Friday sentenced Bolivia’s former anti-drug czar to 14 years prison on drug trafficking charges, court sources said. General Rene Sanabria, who was Bolivian President Evo Morales’s top anti-drug official from 2007 to 2008, was arrested in Panama in February and extradited to Miami to face the charges. US District Judge Ursula Ungaro also sentenced Sanabria’s accomplice, Marcelo Foronda, to nine years in prison. According to trial testimony by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), last year Foronda made contact with US agents posing as Colombian drug traffickers who offered to distribute cocaine in Florida. Sanabria agreed to make sure the shipment was protected. In September last year, 144kg of cocaine was shipped to Miami.
COLOMBIA
Coal mine death toll rises
The death toll from an explosion at a coal mine in the north, believed to have been caused by an accumulation of methane gas, has risen to seven, authorities said on Friday. The country’s mining regulator Ingeominas had last put the death toll from Wednesday’s incident at El Diamante mine in the town of Socha at three. Emergency personnel subsequently retrieved the bodies of four more miners who had been trapped under the rubble, Ingeominas said.
UNITED STATES
US$16 muffin claim denied
Auditor claims of a whopping US$16 per muffin at a US government seminar are half-baked, the global hotel chain Hilton said on Friday. In a report, auditors at the Justice Department said the muffins were among several “extravagant and potentially wasteful” food items served at the training conference in August 2009 at the Capital Hilton in Washington. Not true, Hilton Worldwide shot back in a statement. “In Washington, the contracted breakfast included fresh fruit, coffee, juice, muffins, tax and gratuity, for an inclusive price of US$16 per person,” said the corporate parent of the Hilton, Conrad and Waldorf Astoria hotels. The inspector general’s office of the Justice Department said it stood by the 148-page report.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in