GREECE
General strike starts
The nation was yesterday hit by a general strike against an unpopular pension overhaul that has rallied workers against the embattled government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The 24-hour labor action deprived the country of train and ferry services and sidelined dozens of flights. Hospitals were to operate on emergency footing, gas stations were closed and taxis were pulled off the streets. Lawyers and farmers also participated in the walkout.
UNITED STATES
Bill Cosby case to proceed
A judge on Wednesday refused to throw out the sexual-assault case against Bill Cosby, sweeping aside a former district attorney’s claim that he granted the comedian immunity from prosecution a decade ago. Common Pleas Judge Steven O’Neill issued the ruling after a hard-fought two-day hearing in Norristown, Pennsylvania, saying witness credibility was a factor. He did not elaborate. In another setback for the defense, the judge also denied a request to disqualify newly elected Norristown District Attorney Kevin Steele from the case. Cosby’s lawyers had accused Steele of making a “political football” out of Cosby during the campaign. Cosby, 78, was arrested in December last year and charged with drugging and violating former Temple University athletic department employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004.
UNITED KINGDOM
Architect Hadid honored
Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid was awarded the Royal Gold Medal on Wednesday, becoming the first individual woman to win the award. Known for works including the Guangzhou Opera House in China and the London Aquatics Centre, Hadid was presented the medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects after her selection was personally approved by Queen Elizabeth II. “I am very proud to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal, in particular, to be the first woman to receive the honor in her own right,” Hadid said. “We now see more established female architects all the time. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Sometimes the challenges are immense. There has been tremendous change over recent years and we will continue this progress.”
RUSSIA
Pussy Riot release video
The punk protest group Pussy Riot sashayed back into the public eye on Wednesday with the release of a music video savaging Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, who locked up three members of the group in 2012. Wearing police uniforms and fishnet stockings, they whip hooded prisoners and waterboard them in their prison cells. The well-made-up women gleefully throw wads of cash into the air and flirt viciously with their viewers. The women, playing prison guards, rap lustily about money and torture a man with hot clothes irons. One wears a bird mask, a reference to Chaika, whose name means “sea gull.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Missing lord declared dead
A judge on Wednesday declared the infamous Lord Lucan officially dead, four decades after he disappeared following the murder of the family’s nanny in a lurid tale that has gripped the nation. Lucan’s son, George Bingham, launched a High Court bid to obtain a death certificate for his father last year. Mystery has shrouded the whereabouts of Richard John Bingham, the seventh earl of Lucan, since he vanished at the age of 39 after his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in 1974 at the London home of Lucan’s estranged wife.
CHINA
Pilots told to avoid vices
Airline pilots have been warned to steer clear of prostitutes, gambling and drink ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, part of a campaign to strengthen the nation’s air safety record. Praising pilots for flying 8.46 million hours last year, the China Airline Pilots’ Association said in an open letter on an aviation Web site on Wednesday that “very few” pilots were selfish or hedonistic. However, some pilots were involved with prostitutes, gambling, drunk-driving and smuggling, it said, adding that such behavior “severely challenges legal and moral bottom lines.”
CHINA
Ex-police chief charged
A former regional police chief has been charged with murder, bribery and possession of firearms and explosives, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said in a statement, with his victim reportedly a girlfriend more than three decades his junior. Zhao Liping (趙黎平), 64, headed the police in Inner Mongolia for seven years until he retired in 2012, and was also a deputy head of the northern region’s government. He was detained last year in Chifeng on suspicion of killing a 28-year-old woman with whom he “had an intimate relationship” because she wanted to expose his wrongdoings, media reports said earlier.
NEW ZEALAND
Malaysian officer gets jail
A Malaysian military officer whose legal case prompted outrage after he left the country under the protection of diplomatic immunity was yesterday sentenced to nine months of home detention after pleading guilty to indecent assault. Judge David Collins said Muhammad Rizalman Ismail would serve the sentence in a Wellington rental home before being deported back to Malaysia. Rizalman was arrested in May 2014 after he broke into the home of a 21-year-old woman, entered her bedroom wearing nothing but a shirt and struggled with her before she escaped and called police. He returned to Malaysia after under diplomatic protection. He was extradited in November 2014.
INDIA
Mob attacks foreign student
Police yesterday arrested five people over an enraged mob’s attack on a Tanzanian student who was beaten, her shirt ripped off and car set ablaze in the city of Bengaluru. Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj branded the attack “shameful” and demanded swift justice for those responsible. The mob attacked the 21-year-old and her male friends on Sunday night in apparent revenge for a road accident in which a Sudanese driver ran over a local woman who died. The student said in a complaint lodged with police on Wednesday that the mob attacked her car as they drove near the scene of the accident less than an hour later. “My friends and I hopped onto a bus. The driver didn’t move and the other passengers threw us out. A passerby who also offered me his T-shirt was also thrashed,” she said.
THAILAND
Foreign card players nabbed
A vow by the ruling junta to rid the country of foreign criminals has netted an unlikely group of outlaws: elderly bridge players. Police and military volunteers raided a bridge club on Wednesday night in Pattaya, arresting 32 foreigners, most of them British. Pattaya police superintendent Colonel Suthat Pumphanmuang yesterday said the raid was sparked by a public complaint to the anti-corruption center. Suthat said all but one of those arrested were freed on a 5,000 baht (US$140) bail after 12 hours in custody. The final person was unable to pay bail and remains in jail.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion