COLOMBIA
Police chief Palomino quits
The nation’s head of police resigned on Wednesday amid accusations of illegal enrichment and sexual misconduct with young cadets that threatened to tarnish the reputation of one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. General Rodolfo Palomino’s resignation came a day after the inspector general opened an administrative probe into the accusations, which surfaced in the media late last year. Palomino, in his third year as police chief, reiterated his innocence at a press conference and said the charges are part of a campaign to slander him. The accusations against Palomino range from his purchase of a luxury home outside Bogota that was apparently incompatible with his police salary and alleged illegal wiretaps of journalists, but the most damning charges, which have monopolized public attention the past few days, are Palomino’s alleged participation in a male prostitution ring that allegedly forced entry-level cadets to cater to high-ranking officers and even members of congress.
UNITED STATES
Cosby sues his accuser
Bill Cosby has sued a woman whose allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted her sparked the only criminal charges against the disgraced comedian, court records showed on Wednesday. An entertainer who built a career on family-friendly comedy, Cosby now faces accusations from more than 50 women that he sexually assaulted them, often after plying them with drugs and alcohol, in a series of attacks dating back to the 1960s. Cosby’s lawsuit, which was filed under seal in a Philadelphia federal court on Feb. 1, named Andrea Constand and her attorneys, Dolores Troiani and Bebe Kivitz, court records showed. US District Judge Eduardo Robreno lifted the seal on only parts of the civil case on Tuesday and the complaint was not publicly available by Wednesday night, so the full extent of the lawsuit was not immediately known. The cause of the case was listed as a “contract dispute.”
UNITED STATES
School agrees to allow guns
The University of Texas at Austin begrudgingly agreed on Wednesday to allow students to carry guns into classrooms, months after state lawmakers passed a bill outlawing gun bans at public universities. “I do not believe handguns belong on a university campus, so this decision has been the greatest challenge of my presidency to date,” university president Gregory Fenves said in a statement. “I empathize with the many faculty members, staffers, students and parents of students who signed petitions, sent e-mails and letters, and organized to ban guns from campus and especially classrooms.” Some faculty members have threatened to quit rather than allow students to carry guns, saying the presence of such weapons is too threatening in an environment that is meant to encourage debate.
UNITED STATES
Medical center pays ransom
The president of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center said on Wednesday that his hospital paid hackers a ransom of US$17,000 in bitcoins to regain control of their computer systems after a cyberattack. Allen Stefanek said in a statement that paying the ransom was the “quickest and most efficient way” of regaining access to the affected systems, which were crippled on Feb. 5 and interfered with the staff’s ability to communicate electronically. Stefanek said there was no evidence that any patient or employee information was accessed in the malware attack. “Patient care has not been compromised in any way,” Stefanek said.
PAKISTAN
Gunmen kill nine officers
Suspected militants killed at least nine policemen in twin attacks overnight in a northwest tribal district that borders Afghanistan, officials said yesterday. Two separate groups of militants struck almost simultaneously at a police checkpoint in the Pandyali area of Mohmand District where they killed seven, and at a solar-powered tube well in the Michni area of the same region where they shot dead two officers who were standing guard. The attacks were later claimed by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban) militant group in an e-mail to reporters.
ISRAEL
Jerusalem settlement found
Authorities on Wednesday said they had uncovered findings proving for the first time the existence of an established human settlement in Jerusalem dating 7,000 years ago. A dig in the annexed east Jerusalem neighborhood Shuafat revealed two homes with parts of walls and floors intact, as well as “pottery vessels, flint tools, and a basalt bowl” characteristic of the Chalcolithic era, the Israel Antiquities Authority said. The discoveries came to light during road work in the area. Chalcolithic settlements have been found outside of Jerusalem, but prior to the Shuafat finding, only “fragmentary” remnants were unearthed in the city, said Amnon Barzilai, head of the authority’s prehistory branch. “Now in the new dig we found remnants of a village, an established village.” In the Chalcolithic period humans were “still using stone tools, but began to create high-level ceramics and for the first time, copper tools as well,” said Ronit Lupu, director of excavations at the authority.
AUSTRALIA
‘Hairy panic’ grips town
Hairy panic is paralyzing parts of a town in Victoria, but it is not quite the existential nightmare it sounds, just a fast-growing tumbleweed. Homes in Wangaratta are being inundated with the evocatively named plant pest, with some residents having to spend hours digging out their driveways. Townsfolk are no stranger to the native prickly menace, usually swept in by winds during the hot and dry summer months. However, this season has seen an unusual amount of hairy panic — known scientifically as Panicum effusum — with hundreds of thousands of the fuzzy, yellowish plants swamping the entrances of homes, driveways and backyards. “It’s a fairly significant problem,” Wangaratta administrator Rod Roscholler said yesterday. “For whatever reason, the climate, the weather, the temperatures, the rains, must have combined for it to be a ‘bumper crop’ this year.” Residents spend hours clearing the weeds, piles of which can reach up to the roof. “It’s physically draining and mentally more draining,” Pam Twitchett told the Seven news network.
INDIA
Groom killed in gunfire
A groom was hit and killed by a bullet apparently fired by celebrating members of his wedding party in Uttar Pradesh state, a local police officer said yesterday. Amit Rastogi, 28, was fatally struck late on Wednesday while leading the wedding party to his bride’s house. “He was hit by a bullet in the head apparently fired by someone from the marriage party, but we are looking at other angles, including murder,” said Uma Shankar Singh, the investigating officer in Sitapur District where the incident occurred. The officer said the groom, who fell from his horse after being hit, was taken to hospital in the state capital, Lucknow, where doctors declared him dead.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to