PANAMA
Former minister posts bail
Former economy and finance minister Frank De Lima, who is facing trial on graft charges, was released from jail on Friday after posting US$200,000 bail. “Justice has been done,” his wife, Kristelle Getzler, said on Twitter alongside a photograph showing De Lima in a car. The ex-minister was in the government of former president Ricardo Martinelli, himself being investigated for suspected corruption and illegally spying on opponents during his 2009 to 2014 term in office. An arrest order has been issued for Martinelli, a 63-year-old multi-millionaire supermarket magnate, but he is in the US. A court authorized De Lima’s release on bail on Feb. 5 pending his trial. He was arrested in May last year on charges that he and Martinelli skimmed as much as US$1.7 million from grain purchases made by a government food assistance program.
UNITED STATES
Fugitive bites off fingertips
Police said a fugitive from Tampa, Florida, who did not want to be identified by his fingerprints during a traffic stop in northeast Ohio chewed off his fingertips. Kirk Kelly has been jailed on felony counts of evidence tampering and obstructing official business and misdemeanor charges of falsification and resisting arrest. A message left for his attorney after business hours on Friday was not returned. Police in Tallmadge, Ohio, said Kelly and several other people were put into a cruiser without handcuffs after their vehicle was stopped last weekend and officers thought they smelled drugs. Police said Kelly gave false names as they tried to identify him. They said they figured out who he is after photographs of his tattoos were provided by police in Florida.
UNITED STATES
Astronaut to make history
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s mission is one for the history books. Kelly has been living in the International Space Station since last March. By the time he lands in Kazakhstan next week, he would have spent 340 consecutive days in space, a US record. Kelly would have completed 5,440 laps around Earth and logged 231.4 million kilometers. He would also have welcomed nine visiting spacecraft and shared the place with 14 other humans, including his roommate for the long haul, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who is also returning to Earth. He would have drunk nearly 760 liters of recycled urine and sweat, collected from himself and everyone else on board. He took hundreds of breathtaking pictures of the home planet and posted them on Instagram and Twitter as StationCDRKelly, not to be confused with ShuttleCDRKelly, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, his identical twin.
VENEZUELA
US court dismisses lawsuit
A US court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Central Bank against an apparently US-based Web site that tracks the plummeting black market value of the South American country’s currency. The Delaware district court on Friday said it was dismissing without prejudice the complaint against the Web site DolarToday. The judge signing the decision agreed with DolarToday that the court did not have jurisdictional authority to consider the issue. The Central Bank received seven days to file an amended complaint that might meet jurisdictional muster. The nation has the world’s highest inflation and its government accused DolarToday of publishing fake rates, intentionally driving the bolivar’s value. It hoped to close the operation.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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