UNITED STATES
Arrest made over body parts
Three body parts — including a foot — found in a homeowner’s recycling bin likely belong to a woman who was reported missing on Saturday morning, Seattle police said on Monday. Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole said at an evening news conference that an arrest had been made in the case and detectives believe the human remains are those of Ingrid Lyne, a 40-year-old mother of three who works as a nurse in Seattle. Friends of Lyne said they last saw her on Friday afternoon and that she had planned to go on a date to a Seattle Mariners baseball game on Friday night with someone she met online. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office will make the final determination of identity. Police arrested John Robert Charlton, 37, on Monday morning in Snohomish County, north of Seattle. He has been booked into jail on investigation of homicide. It was not immediately clear if Charlton had an attorney.
UNITED STATES
Prisoner sues Cambodia
A southern California man who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Cambodia is suing that government, saying he was framed by a brutal and repressive regime. The lawsuit was filed on Friday in Los Angeles federal court on behalf of Meach Sovannara and his family. Meach, who lived in Long Beach, California, was spokesman for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. He was arrested in 2014 during a demonstration and is serving 20 years in Cambodia for insurrection. His wife and three children remain in Long Beach. The lawsuit alleges torture through illegal detention and acts of international terrorism by the Cambodian government and the prime minister’s son, Hun Manet, who heads the military and security police. A message to the Cambodian honorary consulate in Long Beach seeking comment was not immediately returned.
UNITED STATES
Thieves tunnel into vault
In a scene more often seen in a Hollywood caper than in Borough Park, Brooklyn’s sedate shopping district, employees arrived for work at a bank on Monday morning to find a tunnel through the ceiling straight into the vault, with hundreds of thousands of dollars missing, the police said. The crime was discovered on Monday at the bank, a branch of HSBC, but the break-in probably happened over the weekend, the police said. The bank is closed on Saturday and Sunday, according to its Web site. When exactly the theft took place and how many people were involved were not known. Using a preliminary report, the police initially said US$280,000 had been stolen, but officials later said that the number would probably change. No arrests have been made.
UNITED STATES
Turtle smuggler in court
Prosecutors in Michigan are seeking a five-year prison sentence for a Canadian man who says he smuggled more than 1,000 turtles to China to help pay for his college education. Kai Xu was to return to Ann Arbor federal court yesterday. He has pleaded guilty and said his crime was a “shameful” effort to relieve the financial burden on his parents. In 2014, he was caught at the Ontario, Canada, border with 51 turtles taped to his legs. The government says he shipped turtles to China from Canada and the US, or hired someone to fly to China from the US with turtles in luggage. Xu has been in custody for 19 months and hopes to avoid more time behind bars. He was a student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of