UNITED STATES
Miami killer found guilty
A Miami man who killed his wife and then posted a photograph of her bloodied body on Facebook was found guilty of second-degree murder on Wednesday. Derek Medina, 33, who remained impassive after the jury delivered its verdict, could be jailed for life after he shot Jennifer Alfonso eight times in August 2013 in the kitchen of their home. Medina said he acted in self-defense after she threatened him with a knife and following years of abuse at the hands of his wife, 27. However, after six hours’ deliberation, jurors rejected that claim.
UNITED STATES
Toddler dies in oven
A toddler left alone with her pre-school siblings in their Texas home suffered fatal burns after they put her in the oven and switched it on, local media reported. J’Zyra Thompson, 19 months, was left unsupervised along with her three-year-old twin siblings in a Houston apartment. A five-year-old was also present. Court records obtained by ABC-13 News in Houston said the twins told child protective services that one of them put their little sister in the oven and the other one made it “hot.” Their mother, Raqual Thompson, 25, is to appear in court on Monday on four counts of child endangerment, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s office. Thompson reportedly told police that she had gone out with her boyfriend to collect a pizza and a prescription at the drug store when her child burned to death on Monday last week. When they returned home they found the three other children crying and pointing to the kitchen. The oven had toppled over with the door face down on the floor. Child protective services, quoted by local media, said the couple had failed to alert a grandmother who lived in the same apartment complex that they were leaving the children unsupervised.
SOUTH KOREA
Feces force-feeder jailed
A court yesterday jailed a university professor for 12 years for forcing a student to eat human feces and drink urine during a two-year period of physical and psychological assault. The sentence was two years more than had been demanded by prosecutors, reflecting, the court said, “unimaginable atrocities” committed by the 52-year-old professor that had amounted “to a sort of psychological murder.” The professor, identified only by his surname, Jang, was arrested in July after a design student, now aged 29, attempted to commit suicide to escape his ordeal. The abuse began after Jang hired the student to work for a non-profit organization. The court heard how the professor — aided by other former students who were accused as codefendants — had assaulted the design student with a baseball bat and other weapons. He also had a plastic bag forced over his face and filled with pepper spray, after which he was fed human excrement.
VENEZUELA
Opposition candidate killed
An opposition candidate in the Dec. 6 legislative elections was shot dead during an event on Wednesday, alongside the wife of a jailed opposition leader, an official said. “Luis Manuel Diaz, local leader of the Democratic Action party in Altagracia de Orituco [Guarico state] has just been shot dead,” the party’s chairman, Henry Ramos Allup, said on Twitter. Ramos Allup said Diaz was standing next to Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who is in prison for incitement to violence.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing