CAMEROON
Pirates abduct ship crew
A German shipping company has said pirates have abducted eight crew members from one of its vessels off the coast of West Africa. MC-Schiffahrt said on its Web site that pirates attacked the MarMalaita late on Wednesday while it was anchored off Douala. The Hamburg-based company said it has assembled an emergency response team and is working with “all relevant authorities” to free its crew. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday that three Russians were among those seized, citing information from the seaman recruiting agency Marlow Navigation of St Petersburg.
UNITED STATES
Children’s book artist dies
Charles Santore, an illustrator known for his richly detailed and whimsical interpretations of classic children’s books, has died, his daughter said on Friday. Christina Santore said her father died on Sunday last week after a brief illness in Philadelphia, where he was born, raised and worked. He was 84. He spent more than three decades reimagining classic children’s tales like L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Grimm fairy-tales and Aesop’s fables. “Charlie Santore was an artistic treasure in the industry. He created worlds that were familiar, but elevated them beyond the scope of our imagination,” said Running Press Kids creative director Frances Soo Ping-chow, who worked with Santore for more than a decade.
NORTH MACEDONIA
Alexander statues vandalized
Efforts by the government to relabel public statues of historic figures, under a deal with Greece, are off to a rocky start. Vandals removed plaques installed on Thursday on three statues in the capital, Skopje, of Alexander the Great and his family, which stated that they belong to ancient Greek history. One of the plaques removed was retrieved on Friday. No arrests were made. Greece long accused its neighbor, formerly called Macedonia, of trying to appropriate ancient Greek culture and of harboring territorial claims on northern Greece.
UNITED STATES
NASA picks lunar lander firm
NASA picked on Friday Alabama’s Rocket City to lead development of the next moon lander for astronauts. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville beat out Johnson Space Center in Houston, which managed the Apollo lunar lander a half-century ago. The new lunar lander — not yet built or even designed — is meant to carry a woman and a man to the moon’s south pole by 2024. Under the plan, the astronauts are to depart for the surface from a small space station around the moon and return there.
UNITED STATES
Man convicted for torture
A California man who previously escaped from jail and was on the run for a week was on Friday convicted of kidnapping and torturing a marijuana dispensary owner who he mistakenly believed had buried large sums of money in the desert. A jury in Newport Beach found Hossein Nayeri, 40, guilty of two counts of kidnapping and one count of torture in the 2012 abduction of the dispensary owner and his roommate’s girlfriend. Nayeri and three others plotted to kidnap and rob the man, who was bound and burned with a blowtorch while his captors drove through the desert demanding the money, authorities said. They cut off his penis before leaving him and the woman on the side of a road, the authorities said.
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