UNITED STATES
US Airways flies last flight
The final US Airways flight on Friday departed from San Francisco bound for Philadelphia, making the last leg of its round-trip journey. Flight 1939 was named after the airline’s founding year. The flight departed from Philadelphia International Airport at 10:36am, with the Airbus A321 making scheduled stops in Charlotte, North Carolina; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Francisco. All future flights are to fly under the American Airlines banner, following the completion of a merger announced in 2013. US Airways was formed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as All American Aviation. It later operated as Allegheny Airlines before becoming US Airways.
UNITED STATES
Mom throws baby to death
A 27-year-old woman on Thursday allegedly threw her baby daughter to her death from the window of their sixth-floor apartment, the third such tragedy in as many months in New York City. Tenisha Fearon — who ignored the pleas of her horrified neighbors — has been charged with murder after the death of the six-month old in the Bronx. Her three other young children, aged four, eight and 10, who were present at the time, have been placed in care. A source told the local NY1 News that Fearon was suffering postpartum depression and NBC said the family was about to be evicted from their apartment. Last month, another woman, aged 33, threw her baby daughter to her death from a seventh-floor window soon after giving birth, also in the Bronx. She had reportedly hidden her pregnancy.
RUSSIA
Driver throws man in river
Prosecutors on Friday opened an attempted murder probe after a businessman threw a pedestrian who touched his car into a canal in Saint Petersburg. The pedestrian, who is reportedly handicapped, “accidentally touched the Audi of the 30-year-old businessman with his foot,” prosecutors said in a statement. The furious driver “got out of his car and punched him in the face before throwing him over the railings into the canal,” the statement said. The victim, 44, managed to clamber out of the water and was hospitalized. The driver was later detained and faces 11 years in jail. Video footage of the incident, recorded by a dashboard camera in a passing vehicle, sparked a frenzy of criticism and was broadcast on local television. Other recent eye-catching road rage incidents captured on ubiquitous dashboard cameras have included an angry priest chasing a man in a provincial city after he blocked in his expensive sedan car.
UNITED STATES
Amorous couple delay arrest
Florida police serving an arrest warrant on a burglary suspect on Wednesday ended up in a long standoff because the man’s girlfriend wanted to have sexual intercourse with him one last time, authorities said. Police finally did arrest Ryan Patrick Bautista, 34, and his girlfriend, Leanne Hunn, 30, after the six-hour drama at their mobile home in Jacksonville the sheriff’s office told the television station WTLV. Police showed up at the home to arrest Bautista on a warrant charging him with armed burglary. Inside the mobile home, he and Hunn were not armed. They just refused to come out. During negotiations with the police, Hunn told officers she would come out, “but she wanted to have sex for one last time,” the television station reported.
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
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
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