UNITED STATES
Todd Palin in intensive care
Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Tuesday said her husband is still in the intensive care unit of an Alaska hospital with multiple injuries, including broken bones and a collapsed lung, two days after a serious snowmobile accident. Todd Palin, 51, suffered multiple broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and broken clavicle, as well as knee and leg injuries. He was back in surgery to repair several fractures, Sarah Palin said in a statement on social media on Tuesday. “Knowing Todd, once he’s cognizant, he’ll probably ask docs to duct tape him up and he’ll call it good,” she said. “He’s tough.” The accident on Sunday forced Sarah Palin to cut short a campaign trip for Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
ECUADOR
Plane crash kills 22
An army plane crashed in the Amazon rainforest on Tuesday, killing all 22 people on board, President Rafael Correa said. “There are no survivors,” Correa wrote on Twitter, several minutes after first posting news of the crash. “This is a tragedy.” He said the plane was carrying 19 paratroopers, two pilots and a mechanic. The plane went down in the eastern province of Pastaza, near the border with Peru. Minister of Defense Ricardo Patino said he was on his way to the scene. “General Luis Castro is personally leading the operation [to recover remains]. Everyone distressed by loss of our fallen brothers,” Patino said on Twitter. “The plane is completely destroyed and the wings were scattered” across the area,” said Jesse Guevara, a student of the Pastaza aviation school who reached the crash site.
ISRAEL
US ‘treasure hunter’ arrested
A US tourist has been arrested after spending a night in a cave below Jerusalem’s Old City in what might have been a search for mythical buried treasure, police and media reports said on Tuesday. The tourist was found on Friday last week after spending the night in Zedekiah’s Cave, also known as Solomon’s Quarries, a 20,000m2 area beneath the Muslim quarter of the Old City. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the 19-year-old tourist, who was not identified, hid inside the site at closing time on Thursday last week before digging in different areas of the cave. Several worthless limestone rocks were found in his backpack, police said. Haaretz reported that the odd expedition may have been linked to “Jerusalem Syndrome” — the name given to what some tourists experience when they are overwhelmed while visiting the Holy Land due to its religious significance. Zedekiah’s Cave is the remnant of what was once the largest quarry in Jerusalem, dating back at least to the Second Jewish Temple period, from the sixth century BC to the first century AD. Several myths are associated with the site, including treasure supposedly buried there.
FRANCE
Woman, 91, earns doctorate
A woman aged 91 has become one of the oldest women in the country to gain a doctorate after she completed a thesis that she had begun three decades earlier. Colette Bourlier was awarded the mark of “high distinction” for her work, which she successfully defended on Tuesday before a jury of the University of Franche-Comte in Besancon. “It took a bit of time to write because I took breaks,” Bourlier said, explaining the exceptional time for her opus. The thesis was titled Immigrant workers in Besancon in the second half of the 20th century.
INDONESIA
Security forces kill militants
Security forces killed two ethnic Uighur Chinese belonging to a militant network led by the nation’s most-wanted man, police said yesterday. The nation has launched an aggressive, military-backed security campaign in the jungles of Sulawesi Island as it battles the threat from growing domestic support for the Islamic State militant group. Police said the men, part of China’s Uighur Muslim minority, had joined Santoso, a militant in Poso in central Sulawesi, who is Indonesia’s most high-profile backer of the Islamic State and has been on the run for more than three years. “Based on testimony from another suspect we had arrested, those two were identified as Uighurs,” Central Sulawesi police spokesman Hari Suprapto said.
CAMBODIA
Student jailed over post
A court on Tuesday jailed a university student for 18 months for inciting crimes in an antigovernment Facebook post that called for regime change. Facebook is popular in the nation, where disenfranchised citizens have increasingly turned to the Internet to highlight alleged state abuses and demand political reforms. Kong Raya, 24, was the first Cambodian convicted of using social media to attack the government of long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has warned that online critics could be traced and arrested in a matter of hours. “There’s nothing to be surprised about. This is how the court works,” Raya, who looked unshaken by the verdict as he left the courtroom flanked by guards, told reporters. Raya was charged in August last year for urging the public to join his “color revolution” to “change the vulgar regime.”
INDIA
In-laws arrested over killing
The father-in-law of a lower-caste student brutally hacked to death in a suspected “honor killing” has been arrested, police said Tuesday. Three men armed with sickles and sharp weapons attacked the 22-year-old student from the lowest Dalit caste and his wife on a crowded street in the southern state of Tamil Nadu on Sunday, killing him and seriously injuring her. The woman’s father and uncle were among five people arrested over the assault, which was apparently motivated by her decision to marry outside her own caste, police said. “We have arrested five accused and are looking for five more,” A. Dhavamani, an investigating officer, told reporters. “Three of them were involved in the attack, including the woman’s uncle,” he said, adding that the others have confessed to conspiracy to kill the man. The Press Trust of India news agency said the woman’s mother was also among those arrested, although this could not immediately be confirmed. Police said the 19-year-old woman married the Dalit engineering student eight months ago in defiance of her family, who are from the Thevar caste.
BAHRAIN
Activist begins sentence
Activist Zainab al-Khawaja has begun a two-month prison sentence for tearing up a photograph of the king, her lawyer, Mohammed al-Wasti, said on Tuesday. She has been arrested and freed several times since an uprising in 2011 mainly by the nation’s majority Shiite Muslims demanding reforms and a bigger share in government of the Sunni Muslim-led kingdom, and has already served time in prison. Khawaja took her 15-month-old son, Hadi, with her into detention rather than leave him in the care of relatives. Al-Wasti said Khawaja’s time in prison could be extended to more than three years over other alleged offenses.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in