FRANCE
Patient saves his driver
A late-stage cancer patient has saved the life of an ambulance driver who suffered a heart attack, by taking the wheel of his vehicle and driving him to hospital, medical officials said. Christian Nayet, a 60-year-old cancer sufferer from Berck-sur-mer, rescued the driver on Thursday last week by taking him to a hospital in Lens, hospital emergency room manager Frederic Allienne said on Wednesday. Nayet told newspaper Voix du Nord the driver had suffered a heart attack while taking him to a hospital in Lille for a regular scan. “I told him: ‘Give me the keys, trust me. My life is not in danger, but yours is.’” Nayet said. “I couldn’t find the siren, but I managed to turn the lights on and told him to put his arm out the window to signal to the cars to let us pass.” During the drive, Nayet had also administered a blood anticoagulant to the driver. Without his assistance, the driver “could have died,” Allienne said.
FRANCE
Brake failure causes crash
Brake failure was almost certainly what caused a coach full of young Britons to crash in the Alps, the prosecutor investigating the terrifying accident said on Wednesday. The coach’s British driver was left dead and three passengers were seriously injured on Tuesday when the coach crashed on a bend near the end of a steep descent from the ski resort of Alpe-d’Huez. “It is very probably an issue with the brakes,” Grenoble prosecutor Jean-Yves Coquillat said. According to passenger accounts, the driver had shouted out that the brakes were not working as the coach hurtled toward the last of a series of 21 treacherous hairpin bends. After veering off the road, the coach crashed through trees and hit rocks. Most of the passengers were able to escape before the coach caught fire, but one of them is being treated in a specialist burns unit in Lyon. “We came very close to a catastrophe,” said Jean Rampon, the top administrative official in the region. “All the thoughts of the survivors are with the driver, who saved their lives.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Osbourne sorry for bingeing
Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne apologized on Tuesday for bingeing on drink and drugs over the last year and a half, but said he was not getting a divorce from his wife, Sharon. The British singer’s comments on his Facebook page were a response to media speculation about the state of his marriage, with reports that he and Sharon had split up after more than 30 years and were living separately. “Just to set the record straight, Sharon and I are not divorcing,” Osbourne, 64, said on his Facebook page. “I’m just trying to be a better person.” He said he had been drinking and taking drugs for the last year and a half, and had been in a “very dark place,” but has now been sober for 44 days.
CROATIA
Bottle found after 28 years
A Canadian man’s message in a bottle honoring his promise to write to a woman named Mary has finally washed ashore 28 years later in Croatia. Surfers cleaning the debris from a beach at the mouth of the Neretva River in the southern Adriatic came across a half-broken bottle with a paper inside, Croatian newspaper Dubrovack Vjesnik said on its Web site on Wednesday. A 23-year-old local surfer nearly threw it away when she spotted a wet paper inside, which contained a message from Jonathon in Canada. “Mary, you really are a great person. I hope we can keep in correspondence. I said I would write. Your friend always, Jonathon, Nova Scotia, 1985,” the message said.
UNITED STATES
Ex-judge’s wife charged
The wife of a former judge was charged with capital murder after confessing to her involvement in the three shooting deaths of the local district attorney, his wife and an assistant prosecutor, Texas authorities said on Wednesday. Kim Williams was arrested early on Wednesday, a day after she told investigators that she and her husband, Eric Williams, were involved in the shootings, according to documents in the case. Eric Williams has not been charged in the killings. The affidavit says Kim Williams “described in detail her role along with that of her husband,” but was unclear on who she said committed the shooting. Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and assistant prosecutor Mark Hasse prosecuted Eric Williams last year for theft of three computer monitors. Eric Williams was convicted and sentenced to probation. He also lost his elected position as justice of the peace and his law license. McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found dead on March 30, two months after Hasse was slain. Eric Williams was arrested on Saturday and charged with making terroristic threats. He remains jailed on a US$3 million bond.
UNITED STATES
‘Cannibal’ to plead guilty
A prosecutor says a man accused of cannibalism is expected to plead guilty but not criminally responsible in the slaying of a man staying with his family. Charging documents state Alex Kinyua, a 22-year-old former Morgan State University student, told authorities that he ate the heart and brain of the Ghanaian man he was charged with killing last year. Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly said on Wednesday that Kinyua is expected to enter the plea to first-degree murder. His attorney’s office declined comment. The slaying came days after Kinyua, a US citizen originally from Kenya, was charged in an on-campus beating that blinded another man. He entered the same plea to attempted murder in that attack, meaning he would be confined to a mental health facility, not prison.
UNITED STATES
No mercy for baby killer
Ohio Governor John Kasich has turned down a request for mercy by a condemned killer who says he intended to rape his girlfriend’s six-month-old daughter, but not to kill her. Kasich’s decision rejects arguments by attorneys for Steven Smith, who said evidence shows the baby died because Smith was too drunk to realize his sexual assault was killing the child. Kasich’s announcement on Wednesday upheld a unanimous ruling against mercy by the Ohio Parole Board on Wednesday last week. The board said some arguments for sparing Smith, 46, such as his turbulent childhood, were far outweighed by the abhorrent nature of the crime. Smith is scheduled to die on May 1.
BRAZIL
Three arrested in killings
Police on Wednesday arrested three men suspected of involvement in a spate of killings of homeless people in the central-western state of Goias. They are suspected of trying to kill a homeless man on Saturday and of murdering six others in the state capital of Goiania, the Goias state police department said in a statement. Saturday’s victim was shot several times, but survived and identified the three gunmen, it said. Police in Goias say the killings of homeless people may be related to unpaid drug debts. Federal law enforcement officials have said the killings may be the work of extermination groups hired to kill suspected criminals.
‘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