COSTA RICA
Five held in cocaine bust
Authorities on Thursday seized a boat carrying 500kg of cocaine and arrested five suspected traffickers, the government said. They moved on the vessel, 81km from Golfito on the southern Pacific coast, after a tip-off from US authorities who carried out a joint patrol. Two Colombians, an Ecuadoran, a Nicaraguan and a Costa Rican were detained. Authorities found the drugs in individual packets of about 1kg each, the Ministry of Public Security said. The Pacific Ocean region is “very much used to moving drugs from the south,” Minister of Public Security Michael Soto said.
UNITED STATES
Man charged in kidnapping
A New York man has been charged in the kidnapping of two children whose mother fled an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect in Guatemala. The FBI arrested Aron Rosner this week on charges of providing financial assistance to members of the religious group Lev Tahor in an international abduction scheme. The children — 14-year-old Yante Teller and 12-year-old Chaim Teller — were kidnapped on Dec. 8 from their home in upstate New York and taken out of the country, the FBI said in court filings. The boy was spotted with Lev Tahor members at a hotel in Mexico City days after the kidnapping, the filings said. The whereabouts of the children were not clear on Thursday. The children’s mother had been a “voluntary member” of Lev Tahor, but escaped the group after the organization became increasingly extreme, the filings said. Her father, Shlomo Helbrans, founded the sect and in 1994 was convicted of kidnapping a 13-year-old in New York. Rosner transferred money on seven occasions that assisted members of Lev Tahor in the kidnapping, the FBI said. He also is accused of speaking with several “coconspirators about hotels in Mexico, as well as purchases of flights, bus tickets, credit cards and food,” according to a criminal complaint.
UNITED STATES
WWII veteran dies at 112
The nation’s oldest World War II veteran who was also believed to be the oldest living man in the US, Richard Overton, on Thursday died in Texas at 112, a family member said. Shirley Overton, whose husband was Richard’s cousin, said that the US Army veteran died in the evening at a rehabilitation facility in Austin. He had been hospitalized with pneumonia. Richard Overton was in his 30s when he volunteered for the army and was at Pearl Harbor just after the Japanese attack in 1941. He once said that one secret to his long life was smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, which he often was found doing on the porch of his Austin home.
UNITED STATES
Man shocks with testament
Alan Naiman was known for an unabashed thriftiness, but even those closest to him had no inkling of the fortune that he quietly amassed and the last act that he had long planned. The Washington state social worker died of cancer this year at age 63 and left most of a surprising US$11 million estate to children’s charities helping the poor, sick and disabled. The amount baffled the beneficiaries and his best friends. They are lauding Naiman as the anniversary of his death approaches next month. The Seattle man patched up his shoes with duct tape, sought deals at the grocery store deli at closing time and took his best friends out to lunch at fast-food joints. He earned a salary of US$67,234 but saved, invested and rarely spent on himself.
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