JAPAN
Superhero foils gangsters
A mystery crime-fighting superhero is striking fear into the hearts of the nation’s criminals after bravely foiling an armed holdup by a pair of yakuza, local media reported. When the mobsters waved a replica gun in the face of a 38-year-old courier in an attempt to steal a luxury watch, they got more than they bargained for. The intrepid deliveryman — whose true identity, in the best superhero tradition, remains unknown — snatched the fake weapon and forcibly took back the package, Tokyo police said. Suspects Yusuke Kodama, 32, and Hidekazu Oba, 35, both gang members from the Matsuba-kai crime syndicate, were arrested on suspicion of attempted extortion, the Metropolitan Police Department said.
UNITED STATES
Week-long manhunt ends
A massive, week-long manhunt for a suspect in a string of violent crimes — including the killing of two relatives, the shooting of two police officers and multiple carjackings — ended on Sunday evening in a police chase and shoot-out that left the man dead in western Oklahoma. Federal and local police said Michael Dale Vance Jr, 38, was shot and killed by an Oklahoma state trooper near Leedey, Oklahoma. Earlier in the day, Vance had shot and wounded a Dewey County officer, then fled in a car, Washington Marshals Service spokesman Dave Turk said.
EL SALVADOR
Former president arrested
Former president Antonio Saca was arrested on Saturday on corruption charges that alleged misuse of public funds, the attorney general’s office said on Sunday. Saca, a businessman who ruled the nation from 2004 to 2009, was detained on Saturday night during the wedding reception of one of his sons at a reception hall in the capital. He was arrested along with high-ranking former officials of his government, including former communications minister Julio Rank and former youth minister Cesar Funes. Several hours after the arrests, Saca’s former private secretary Elmer Charlaix voluntarily surrendered to police. He faces charges of embezzling at least US$18 million.
UNITED STATES
Stranded shark dies
Officials say a great white shark has died after it was spotted struggling in shallow water in Cape Cod. Atlantic White Shark Conservancy executive director Cynthia Wigren told the Cape Cod Times that a man had spotted the shark on Sunday while walking on Nauset Beach in Orleans. Wigren said the shark had died by the time officials responded. She said the male shark had not been tagged. Researchers estimate it was more than 20 years old. State shark scientist Gregory Skomal was due to conduct a necropsy yesterday. Wigren said the incident marked the year’s first shark stranding on Cape Cod. Three sharks were stranded last year.
UNITED STATES
Two teens killed in shooting
Two teenagers were killed in a shooting that injured four others in suburban Washington on Sunday. Prince George County police said in a news release that they did not believe the shooting was a random act of violence. It occurred at about 2:45am in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Capitol Heights. Police identified the victims as 14-year-old Todd Webb of Capitol Heights and 18-year-old Brian Davis of northwest Washington. Police said another man also suffered life-threatening injuries in the shooting and remained hospitalized. The other three victims had non-life-threatening injuries.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.