VENEZUELA
Government contests bid
President Nicolas Maduro’s government has lodged about 400 individual complaints over allegedly invalid signatures submitted in a bid to remove him from office, officials said on Wednesday. The opposition Mesa de la Unidad (Democratic Unity Roundtable) coalition had collected signatures representing dead and underage people and convicts in its effort to launch a recall referendum, said Jorge Rodriguez, the president’s point man for tackling the drive to remove him from office. “There will end up being thousands of citizen complaints against the massive fraud that was committed,” he told reporters.
MEXICO
Statue plan causes ruckus
The historic sites watchdog on Wednesday was up in arms after a colonial house was demolished to make room for a giant statue of revolutionary figure Pancho Villa near the site of his assassination. The National Anthropology and History Institute ordered authorities in the city of Parral, Chihuahua State, to suspend work after destruction of the house, built in the 17th century and remodeled in the 1800s on Saturday last week. The house, which was a protected historic monument, was at the corner of Plaza Juarez, where Villa was shot dead while driving a car in 1923. The destruction was ordered by the city as part of a project to expand the plaza and install the more than 20m-tall statue of Villa riding a horse.
UNITED STATES
Auto club rates fuels
Many motorists are clogging their vehicles’ engines by not using fuels with enough added detergents, a study released yesterday by the American Automobile Association (AAA) auto club said. Federal rules in place since 1996 require all gasoline to have some engine-cleaning additives, but many major brands have extra detergents. AAA said tests it commissioned from an independent lab found that lesser gasolines left 19 times more deposits on engine intake valves than so-called top-tier fuels after the equivalent of about 6,400km of driving. AAA said carbon deposits reduce a car’s mileage, increase emissions and hurt performance, especially for newer cars. It said gasolines with extra detergents cost an average of US$0.03 per gallon (3.79 liters) more, which could be their undoing.
UNITED STATES
Student sues over seating
A University of Cincinnati student is suing the school in federal court, saying she was told she had to sit and work with other female students and not with male students in a physics lab. Casey Helmicki filed a discrimination lawsuit this month asking the university to stop segregating classes or educational programs by sex. Helmicki said a teaching assistant in August last year told her to work only with other females. “It’s a little bit demoralizing to realize that we weren’t able to work with other genders in the lab,” she said. Helmicki’s attorney, Chris Finney, filed copies of e-mail exchanges between the professor who created the policy and other officials. The professor said that studies show females perform better in small lab groups made up mostly of females. He said he told instructors to rearrange groups if one has three males and a female, and, if possible, to have all-female groups. Ken Petren, the university’s dean of arts and sciences, said what happened was an isolated incident and that there was no policy forcing students to be segregated. Petren said the head of the physics department told him a teaching assistant misinterpreted instructions on how to guide students to form groups.
JAPAN
Court rules against teacher
A school was right to cut the pay of a teacher who refused to stand for the national anthem, the Osaka District Court said on Wednesday. Hiroko Shimizu, 63, filed the case demanding education authorities in Osaka retract the punitive measure, which was taken after she ignored an all-rise order for the national anthem during a 2013 graduation ceremony. However, judge Hiroyuki Naito turned down Shimizu’s demand, ruling the pay cut was appropriate, a court spokesman said. The order to stand for the singing of the anthem was not aimed at forcing participants to follow any ideology, Naito told the court, according to Jiji Press. Rather, it was to ensure that “the ceremony proceeded smoothly and order was maintained,” he said.
CAMBODIA
Dress code at Angkor Wat
Authorities said they would ban visitors to the famed Angkor temples who dress immodestly. Long Kosal, a spokesman for Apsara Authority, which oversees the archeological complex, yesterday said that beginning on Aug. 4, local and foreign tourists will be required to wear pants or skirts that extend to below the knees and shirts that cover their shoulders. Those not dressed appropriately will be required to change their clothes before being allowed to enter Angkor Wat.
SWITZERLAND
Eritrean caught in luggage
The Border Guard Corps caught a 21-year-old Eritrean trying to sneak into the country inside a suitcase on a train from Italy. A video posted online showed a man’s hand, then arm, then head jutting out of the rectangular bag as he struggled to unzip it from the inside. He then got help from a border guard, unfolding his legs only to be led away. Mirco Ricci, a border guard in the Ticino region, on Wednesday said the man was detained on Monday evening on a platform in the southern Chiasso municipality and sent back to Italy, because he opted not to request asylum. “We’ve had people try to sneak in in a car trunk,” Ricci said. “This is the first time in Ticino that we’ve found someone in a bag.”
SPAIN
Four hurt in bull run
A hospital official said four people were injured, but no one was gored, as thousands of thrill-seekers tested their agility and courage by racing alongside fighting bulls through the streets of Pamplona in the first bull run of the festival of San Fermin. Navarra Hospital physician Manuel Montesino said three people were taken to the city hospital with head injuries, while another suffered an arm injury in the 8am run. There were no immediate details on their identities.
‘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