BRAZIL
Ecclestone relative rescued
Police on Sunday said that they had rescued the kidnapped mother-in-law of Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone from two men on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. According to police, 67-year-old Aparecida Schunck, who had been held since Friday, was not harmed in the operation conducted by Sao Paulo’s anti-kidnapping division. Schunck is the mother of Fabiana Flosi, who married Ecclestone in 2012.
ITALY
Migrants rescued, five die
The coast guard said the bodies of five migrants were recovered from the Mediterranean on Sunday, while more than 6,500 people had been rescued off Libya since Thursday. In one operation, “five migrants were picked up out of the sea, three people were resuscitated and two were already dead,” the coast guard said on its Twitter account. The German aid group Jugend Rettet added that its ship had taken part in the same operation to save 130 people packed onto a rubber dinghy that was taking on water, and it had also recovered two bodies. A fifth body was found aboard a fishing boat from which some 470 migrants were rescued by the navy and the Malta-based aid group MOAS. Sunday’s rescue missions off the Libyan coast brought 1,100 migrants and refugees to safety overall, bringing the total to 6,530 since Thursday, the coast guard said.
NIGERIA
Online fraud suspect nabbed
A man reportedly behind an online fraud network which engineered scams worth more than US$60 million has been arrested in Port Harcourt, Interpol said yesterday. “The 40-year-old Nigerian national, known as ‘Mike,’ is believed to be behind scams totaling more than US$60 million involving hundreds of victims worldwide,” the organization said. “In one case, a target was conned into paying out US$15.4 million. The network compromised e-mail accounts of small to medium businesses around the world, including in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Romania, South Africa, Thailand and the United States.” The suspect ran a network of at least 40 people working from three nations and had money-laundering contacts in China, Europe and the US.
POLAND
Pope explains tumble
Pope Francis has explained why he took a tumble during a public Mass on Thursday at the nation’s most popular Catholic shrine. Reporters aboard the papal plane flying him back to Rome on Sunday night after his five-day trip asked him why he fell while sprinkling incense around the outdoor altar at the Jasna Gora monastery in Czestochowa. “I was watching [an image of] the Madonna, and I forgot the step… I let myself fall, and this saved me. Because if I tried to resist it, I would have gotten hurt,” the pope said.
UNITED STATES
School police charged
Two former Temple University police officers are facing murder charges in the slaying of a woman in Philadelphia. Court records say 47-year-old Aaron Wright and 41-year-old Marquis Robinson were charged on Saturday with murder, aggravated assault, conspiracy and abuse of a corpse in the death of a 24-year-old woman last week. Police say the woman was found dead on Friday morning in the city’s Germantown neighborhood. It is unclear how she died. A local newspaper said it was a domestic case. A Temple spokesman says Wright resigned in 2012, while Robinson was an officer until Sunday, when he was fired because of the charges.
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