UNITED STATES
Reporter dies in crash
Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon was killed in a car crash on Wednesday. He was 73. A car in which Simon was a passenger hit another car in Manhattan, police said. Simon and the car’s driver were taken to a hospital, where Simon was pronounced dead. Simon was among a handful of elite journalists to cover most major overseas conflicts and news stories since the late 1960s, CBS television network said. He won numerous awards, including his fourth Peabody and an Emmy for his 2012 story from the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the world’s only symphony comprised solely of black musicians. Another story about an orchestra in Paraguay won him his 27th Emmy, CBS said.
FRANCE
Survey rates reckless drivers
Italy has produced Europe’s most reckless drivers, a survey released yesterday found, while Greeks were judged the rudest on the continent by Europeans. Thirty-eight percent of 10,000 Europeans questioned in the survey released by motorway operator Vinci described Italians as driving dangerously, a figure that rose to 58 percent among Italian respondents. Greeks came in second with 20 percent of those surveyed declaring them the most irresponsible motorists. And while 56 percent of the Europeans surveyed admitted to road rage incidents such as insulting other motorists, 74 percent of Greeks admitted to such behavior. At the other end of the scale, Swedes were judged the most responsible drivers, cited as such by 37 percent of respondents, followed by Germans with 27 percent and British and Dutch drivers, who were tied with 11 percent of positive responses each. Those surveyed by market research firm IPSOS on behalf of Vinci were drawn from 10 countries and asked about driving habits.
UNITED STATES
Priest admits bizarre plot
In a case that reads like a movie script, a Catholic priest on Wednesday pleaded guilty to trying to help a convicted mob assassin recover a purported Stradivarius violin hidden in the wall of a house. Eugene Klein, who had been a US federal prison chaplain, admitted to conspiring in 2011 to defraud the federal government by passing messages from mobster Frank Calabrese to an unnamed associate on how to get the violin out of Calabrese’s Wisconsin home. If found and authenticated as made by 18th-century instrument maker Antonio Stradivari, such a violin would have been worth millions of dollars. Calabrese, also known as “Frankie Breeze,” was serving a life sentence at the federal prison in Springfield, Missouri, in connection with more than a dozen gangland slayings. Klein, of Springfield, Missouri, faces up to five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine when he is sentenced on June 23.
ANTARCTICA
Icebound boat spurs mission
Crews from the US and New Zealand yesterday were trying to rescue a damaged fishing boat with 27 people aboard that remains stuck in ice near Antarctica. The US Coast Guard said the Australian boat Antarctic Chieftain suffered damage to three of its four propellers after getting stuck on Wednesday and can no longer maneuver. US Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant Donnie Brzuska said it has sent the icebreaker Polar Star on a 330 nautical mile (611km) mission to free the fishing boat. He said the cutter will need to break through several kilometers of ice that is 2.7m thick, as well as endure high winds and snowfall.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was