UNITED STATES
‘Pokemon Go’ player killed
A 20-year-old man was shot to death while playing Pokemon Go at a tourist attraction along San Francisco’s waterfront, authorities and a family friend said on Sunday. Calvin Riley was shot on Saturday night by an unknown assailant at Aquatic Park near Ghiradelli Square, the US Park Police said. A family friend told KGO-TV Riley and a friend were playing the hit mobile game when he was shot. “From what we know there was no confrontation. There was nothing said back and forth. It was just senseless, just came up and shot in the back and ran away for nothing,” John Kirby said. Kirby said Riley and his friend had noticed someone watching them from the top of a hill that overlooks the park, but it was dark and they were mostly looking at their cellphones.
JAPAN
Festival parade firebombed
Fifteen people, including a one-year-old girl, were injured in a Molotov cocktail attack at a Tokyo festival parade, officials said yesterday. Several hand-made fire bombs were thrown from a nearby apartment building when the parade passed through a quiet residential area on Sunday evening, police and fire officials said. Firefighters later found a man in his 60s who had hanged himself in the apartment from which the bombs were apparently thrown, the official said. One of the man’s neighbors told Fuji TV that he had been depressed after losing his wife last year, and complained that the boisterous festival, which included samba dancing, was too noisy for him.
UNITED STATES
Child dies on waterslide
The son of a Kansas State lawmaker on Sunday died on a water slide that is billed as the world’s largest, according to officials and the boy’s family. Authorities did not immediately identify the child who died at Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, but state Representative Scott Schwab and his wife released a statement saying it was their son Caleb Thomas Schwab.
? UNITED STATES
Heart woe ends in murder
A couple who featured in news stories about their difficulties getting medication for a daughter who had a heart transplant were found shot to death in their home along with their three children in an apparent murder-suicide, authorities said. District Attorney John Adams said a handwritten note that “appeared to be a murder-suicide note” was found in the family’s Sinking Spring home on Saturday afternoon. Police said they found all five dead of gunshot wounds and a handgun near one of the adults, but they did not say which one or say who they believe was the shooter.
UNITED STATES
Man on trial after 50 years
A half-century after a 22-year-old woman died in southwest Louisiana, her husband is going on trial, accused of killing her. Jury selection was scheduled to begin yesterday in the second-degree murder case against 76-year-old Felix Vail. He has asked the judge to move his trial out of Calcasieu Parish, where Mary Horton Vail died in October 1962. Vail said she had fallen into the Calacasieu River. He was arrested, but the coroner ruled the death an accidental drowning and a grand jury declined to indict. The current coroner reopened the investigation after the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, published a series about Mary Vail’s death and the disappearances of two other women close to Vail in 1973 and 1984.
‘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
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
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