Ray Liotta of ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Field of Dreams’ dies

Ray Liotta, the blue-eyed actor best known for playing mobster Henry Hill in Goodfellas and baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, has died. He was 67. Liotta’s publicist, Jen Allen, said he was in the Dominican Republic shooting a new movie and did not wake up on Thursday morning. Police in the Dominican Republic said they received a call just before 6am at a hotel where Liotta was staying with his fiancee and found the actor dead. Robert De Niro, who costarred with Liotta in Goodfellas, said in an e-mailed statement that he was saddened by Liotta’s passing. “He is way too way young to have left us,” De Niro said. Another Goodfellas star, Lorraine Bracco, who played Henry’s wife, Karen Hill, wrote on Twitter that she could be “anywhere in the world & people will come up & tell me their favorite movie is Goodfellas. Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same...Ray Liotta.” Liotta was also mourned by Alessandro Nivola, who appeared with him in The Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. Nivola called him “dangerous, unpredictable, hilarious and generous with his praise for other actors.” The Newark, New Jersey, native was born in 1954 and adopted at age six months out of an orphanage by a township clerk and an auto parts owner. Liotta said he always assumed he was mostly Italian — the movies did, too — but later in life while searching for his birth parents, discovered he was actually Scottish. At the University of Miami he studied drama and acting, because he said they had no math requirement for enrollment. He would often say in interviews that he only started auditioning for plays because a pretty girl told him to. His memorable role of the ghost of Shoeless Joe

New Zealand grandmother builds her own electric car ‘to show it can be done’

A New Zealand grandmother has converted a 29-year-old wreck into a homemade, solar-powered electric vehicle, “to show it can be done.” Rosemary Penwarden, 63, has been driving her converted vehicle around South Island roads for three years now. The project took her and a friend more than eight months of solid work and tinkering. “You do have to be a little bit mad,” she said. “I want to thank the oil companies for the motivation.” Penwarden bought a 1993 car body from an auto wrecker, and took the combustion engine out herself. She replaced it with a new gearbox and electric engine, then packed the front and back of the car with batteries — 24 under the hood and 56 in the trunk. In total the project, including labor, cost Penwarden NZ$24,000 (US$15,612). The vehicle is registered and warranted. After several years on the road, her project came to the attention of local reporters. Refrigeration engineer Hagen Bruggemann, who helped Penwarden convert the car, has now converted about eight vehicles to electric engines. “You can talk as much as you want about all this environmental crap, but you have to implement it,” he said. Without free labor, converting a car is not a financially viable option for most people — but there is a strong commercial argument for converting trucks and larger vehicles, where the body tends to be worth much more than the engine, he said. Converting a diesel truck would pay off within five years, he said. “Really, the polluters should be paying — I don’t see why they’re not,” he added. A longtime environmental campaigner, Penwarden said the time and money she devoted to converting her car is not possible for everyone. “I’m in a very privileged place,” she said, adding that as the world adapts to the climate crisis, she wanted to illustrate the possibility. She charges the

Colombian front-runner could shift US relationship

CAMPAIGN PASSION: Leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro has promised to dramatically adjust the economy and change how the nation fights drug cartels

Fabian Espinel last year helped to organize roadblocks where young people protested against police violence and government plans to increase taxes on lower income Colombians. Now, as Colombia heads into its presidential election tomorrow, Espinel walks the streets of working-class sectors of Bogota handing out flyers for front-running candidate Gustavo Petro and helps paint murals in support of the leftist politician. “Young people in this country are stuck,” said Espinel, who lost his job as an event planner during the COVID-19 pandemic and received no compensation from his company. “We hope Petro can change that. We need an economic model that is different than the one that has been failing us for years.” Colombians are to pick from six candidates in a ballot being held amid a generalized feeling the nation is heading in the wrong direction. The latest opinion polls suggest Petro could get 40 percent of the votes, with a 15-point lead over his closest rival, but the senator needs 50 percent to avoid a run-off election next month against the second-placed candidate. His main rival through most of the campaign has been Federico Gutierrez, a former mayor of Medellin who is backed by most of Colombia’s traditional parties and is running on a pro-business, economic growth platform, but populist real-estate tycoon Rodolfo Hernandez has been rising fast in polls and could challenge for the second spot. He has few connections to political parties and said he would reduce wasteful government spending and offer rewards for Colombians who denounce corrupt officials. Petro, a former rebel with anti-establishment rhetoric, promises to make significant adjustments to the economy, as well as change how Colombia fights drug cartels and other armed groups. His agenda largely centers on fighting inequalities that have affected the South American nation’s people for decades and became worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has promised

Marcos triggers fears of historical erasure

Books about late Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and his brutal era of martial law are flying off the shelves, spurred by “panic buying” after his son and namesake won a May 9 presidential election. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr’s presidency, set to begin on June 30, has many people worried about losing access to books and other accounts of his father’s rule, given his family’s decades-long effort to rehabilitate its name through what critics describe as a campaign of historical revisionism. “They are panic buying,” book retailer Alexine Parreno said of her customers, many of them parents buying books about martial law aimed at children. “They are really worried and scared that the books will be pulled out and that everything will be revised.” One shopper was Faith Alcazaren, a mother of two, who picked up extra bundles of books to send to friends overseas. “I felt like the smallest thing I can do and have control over is to protect the truth,” she said. Thousands of opponents of the senior Ferdinand Marcos were jailed, killed or disappeared during martial law from 1972 to 1981, when the family name became synonymous with cronyism and extravagance as billions of dollars of state wealth disappeared. The younger Marcos has called for a revision of textbooks that cover his father’s rule, saying they are teaching children lies. His choice of education minister, Philippine vice president-elect Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, has raised fears the Marcos family could entrench its sanitized version of history. “We already thought that textbooks and the teaching of history in basic education was woefully inadequate in terms of explaining to our youth and children what the martial law period meant,” University of the Philippines professor Ramon Guillermo said. “If the Marcoses come back to power and Dutertes are supporting them, we could even have

World News Quick Take

INDIA Bureaucrat couple split The Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday ordered the transfer of a bureaucrat couple to opposite ends of the country, following public outcry over a media report alleging they forced a sports stadium in Delhi to shut early to walk their dog. The ministry transferred Indian Administrative Service officers Sanjeev Khirwar to Arunachal Pradesh state in the distant northeast and Rinku Dugga, his wife, to Ladakh in the far north, an official order said. At the eastern and western ends of the Himalayan mountain range, their new postings are about 3,200km apart. A report by the Indian Express, published with a photograph of Khirwar and Dugga walking their dog on the stadium track, said athletes had alleged that they had been forced to wrap up training early to make way for the couple’s evening stroll. INDONESIA Elephant death investigated A pregnant Sumatran elephant was found dead of suspected poisoning near a palm plantation in Riau province on Sumatra, officials said yesterday. Sumatran elephants are a critically endangered species and fewer than 700 remain on the island. Local authorities are investigating the cause of death of the elephant, which was discovered in a joint patrol by local conservation groups on Wednesday, but they strongly suspect it was poisoned. “From the sign of changes in the shape of its internal organs, such as the lung, it looks like it is burning, black and oozing from the blood,” said Zulhusni Syukri, program director of Rimba Satwa Foundation, one of the groups that found the elephant. The authorities also found pineapple in the elephant’s stomach, even though the fruit is not grown in that area, further leading them to suspect poisoning, Syukri said. UNITED KINGDOM Depeche Mode member dies Andrew Fletcher, a founding member of the British electronic band Depeche Mode, has died aged 60, the band

Anger mounts after US school shooting

‘SICK AND TIRED’: Former US representative Beto O’Rourke interrupted Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s news conference, telling him that the shooting ‘is on you’

Grief at the massacre of 19 children at an elementary school in Texas spilled into confrontation on Wednesday, as angry questions mounted over gun control — and whether this latest incident could have been prevented. The tight-knit Latino community of Uvalde on Tuesday became the site of the US’ worst school shooting in a decade, committed by a disturbed 18-year-old armed with a legally bought assault rifle. Wrenching details have been steadily emerging since the tragedy, which also claimed the lives of two teachers. Briefing reporters, Texas Governor Greg Abbott revealed that teen shooter Salvador Ramos — who was killed by police — shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face before heading to Robb Elementary School. Ramos went on social media to share his plan to attack his grandmother — who, although gravely injured, was able to alert the police. He then messaged again to say his next target was a school, where he headed clad in body armor and wielding an AR-15 rifle. Pressed on how the teen was able to obtain the murder weapon, the Texas governor repeatedly brushed aside suggestions that tougher gun laws were needed in his state — where attachment to the right to bear arms runs deep. “I consider this person to have been pure evil,” Abbott said, articulating a position commonly held among US Republicans — that unfettered access to weapons is not to blame for the country’s gun violence epidemic. Abbott’s stance was echoed by the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby, which issued a statement labeling the shooter as “a lone, deranged criminal.” The governor was called out by a rival Democrat, who loudly interrupted the briefing to accuse him of deadly inaction. “This is on you,” said former US representative Beto O’Rourke, a fervent gun control advocate who is challenging Abbott for his job in November. “You are doing nothing,” O’Rourke

Ousted Pakistani PM disbands protests

Ousted Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan yesterday disbanded a protest march by supporters after clashes with police outside parliament, but threatened that they would return unless an election was called within six days. Khan had rallied thousands of supporters to Islamabad, with plans to occupy sensitive parts of the capital until Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gave in to his demand for new polls, but Khan told his followers yesterday morning to step back, while delivering a fresh ultimatum. “I’m giving you six days. You announce elections in six days,” Khan said from atop a truck after he and thousands of his supporters reached the city. He said parliament should be dissolved to hold elections next month, and warned the government that he will lead a march on the capital again if it did not meet his demands. Khan’s attempt to destabilize Sharif’s month-old coalition government risks fueling tensions during an economic crisis that has forced Pakistan to seek urgent help from the IMF. The government convened a joint session of parliament yesterday to discuss the economic crisis following talks with IMF officials in Doha a day earlier. The IMF said that considerable progress had been made, but emphasized the urgent need for Pakistan to remove fuel and energy subsidies. Khan has said that the confidence vote that toppled him last month was the result of a US conspiracy, and he is demanding a fresh election to show he has national support. He had reportedly fallen out with the country’s powerful military before he was removed by a united opposition that accused him of mismanaging the government, the economy and foreign relations. His call for a march on Islamabad had prompted the government to seal off main roads leading to the capital, but late on Wednesday the Supreme Court ordered that the barriers be removed, telling the government to

Afghan TV presenters wear masks in protest of Taliban

Seconds before he was to present a news bulletin, Afghan television anchor Nisar Nabil put on a black mask as a symbolic protest against Taliban authorities for ordering female presenters to cover their faces on air. “We are taking a stand in support of our women colleagues,” said Nabil, who works at TOLOnews, Afghanistan’s main private television channel. “During our live news broadcasts or political shows, we are wearing masks as a protest,” he said, after presenting a bulletin at the channel’s studio in Kabul. Since seizing power last year, the Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on women and girls to comply with the group’s austere brand of Islam. This month Afghanistan’s supreme leader and Taliban head Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a diktat for women to cover up fully in public, including their faces, ideally with the traditional burqa. The feared Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered female television presenters to follow suit. After initially defying the order, women presenters are wearing full hijabs and veils that leave only their eyes on view across channels such TOLOnews, 1TV, Shamshad TV and Ariana Television. However, they have received support from their male colleagues who have launched a campaign to oppose the order. Male presenters are broadcasting programs on air wearing black masks, sometimes jointly with female colleagues. “The Taliban want to put pressure on media outlets with these restrictions ... they want media outlets to work according to their plans,” said Nabil, dressed in a blazer, jeans and tie. Similar scenes unfolded at the offices of 1TV, another leading private channel. The network’s male presenters and employees wear masks, while women dress in full-body-covering hijabs. “We are fine with our women presenters wearing Islamic hijabs, but without masks, because it is difficult to conduct a program for three or four hours like that,” said Idrees Faroqi, the channel’s

Japan, US fly jets after China drill, N Korea missile test

READY TO RESPOND: The deployment of Chinese and Russian planes represented an ‘increased level of provocation,’ the Japanese minister of defense said

Japanese and US forces on Wednesday conducted a joint fighter jet flight over the Sea of Japan, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday, in an apparent response to a Russia-China joint bomber flight while US President Joe Biden was in Tokyo. The Japan-US joint flight was meant to “confirm combined capabilities of the Japanese SDF [Self-Defense Forces] and the US forces, and to further strengthen the Japan-US alliance,” the SDF’s Joint Staff Office said in a statement. “In order to respond to any emergency, we are taking utmost readiness,” it added. The flight was also held hours after North Korea fired three missiles, including an intercontinental ballistic missile, toward the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, amid concerns about another nuclear test by Pyongyang. The missiles fell into waters outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone. Chinese and Russian strategic bombers conducted joint flights near Japan on Tuesday, while Biden was meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and their counterparts from India and Australia for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), an Indo-Pacific security and economic coalition meant as a counterweight to China’s growing influence in the region, the ministry said. Chinese H-6 bombers joined Russian TU-95s over the Sea of Japan and flew to areas over the East China Sea, but did not enter Japanese airspace, Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi said. Separately, a Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane was spotted flying off the northern Japanese coast. The Chinese-Russian joint flight represented an “increased level of provocation” and a threat to the Quad, Kishi said later on Tuesday. The Chinese Ministry of National Defense said that the Chinese and Russian militaries carried out joint strategic air patrols above the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea and the western Pacific. Wednesday’s Japan-US joint flight involved eight warplanes based in Japan, including four US F-16 fighters and four

Marcos vows to uphold South China sea ruling

Philippine president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday said that he would uphold an international ruling against Beijing over the disputed South China Sea, adding that he would not let China trample on Manila’s maritime rights. China claims almost all of the resource-rich waterway, through which trillions of dollars in trade passes annually, with competing claims from Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam. Beijing has ignored a 2016 decision by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration that declared its historical claim to be without basis. Outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte fostered warmer ties with his more powerful neighbor by setting aside the ruling in exchange for promises of trade and investment, which critics said have not materialized. In his strongest comments yet on the longstanding source of tensions between the two nations, Marcos Jr said he would not “allow a single millimeter of our maritime coastal rights to be trampled upon.” “We have a very important ruling in our favor, and we will use it to continue to assert our territorial rights. It is not a claim. It is already our territorial right,” Marcos Jr told selected local media. “We’re talking about China. We talk to China consistently with a firm voice,” he said. “We cannot go to war with them. That’s the last thing we need right now,” he added. Marcos Jr, popularly known as “Bongbong,” secured more than half of the votes in the May 9 election to win the presidency by a wide margin and cap a remarkable comeback for his family. His father and namesake ruled the Philippines for 20 years, presiding over widespread corruption and human rights abuses before he was ousted in 1986. Marcos Jr formally takes office on June 30. He and his running mate Sara Duterte, who also won the vice presidential race in a landslide, have embraced the key policies of

World News Quick Take

UNITED NATIONS UN clarifies comments The UN late on Wednesday issued a “clarification” of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s remarks during a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), in an apparent suggestion that Chinese state media mischaracterized her comments. The UN said it released a transcript “in response to widely reported remarks attributed to” Bachelet. Shortly after the video call held earlier that day, state broadcaster China Central Television issued a readout saying Bachelet had told Xi that she admired the “efforts and achievement China has made in the areas of poverty elimination, human rights protection.” The UN transcript, in contrast, said Bachelet stressed in her opening remarks that human rights must be at the core of “development, peace and security,” and that China had a crucial role to play within multilateral institutions on issues such as inequality. The excerpt contained nothing that could be construed as praising China’s human rights achievements. SENEGAL Eleven babies die in fire Eleven newborns died in a hospital fire in the western city of Tivaouane, President Macky Sall said late on Wednesday. Just before midnight, Sall wrote on Twitter that 11 infants had died in the blaze. “I have just learned with pain and dismay about the deaths of 11 newborn babies in the fire at the neonatal department of the public hospital,” he wrote. “To their mothers and their families, I express my deepest sympathy.” The fire at Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital was caused by “a short circuit,” Mayor Demba Diop said. Local media said the hospital was newly inaugurated. Last month, in Linguere, four newborns were killed in a fire at a hospital. The mayor of that town attributed it to an electrical malfunction in an air conditioning unit in the maternity ward. UNITED STATES Israel killed Iranian: source Israel has told the US

Man kills children at a Texas school

INTERVENTION: A source said that a border patrol agent had rushed into the school without waiting for backup and killed the teen gunman, who was behind a barricade

An 18-year-old man on Tuesday opened fire at a Texas elementary school, killing at least 19 children as he went from classroom to classroom, officials said. The attacker was killed by law enforcement. The death toll also included two adults, authorities said. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that one of the two was a teacher. The assault at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde was the deadliest shooting at a US school since a man killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Outside the town civic center, where families were told to await news about their loved ones, the silence was broken repeatedly by screams and wailing. “No. Please, no,” one man yelled. “My heart is broken today,” said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent. “We’re a small community, and we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.” Adolfo Cruz, a 69-year-old air-conditioning repairman, was still outside the school as the sun set, seeking word on his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Eliajha Cruz Torres. He drove to the scene after receiving a call from his daughter shortly after the first reports of the shooting. He said that other relatives were at the hospital and the civic center. Waiting was the heaviest moment of his life, he said. “I hope she is alive,” Cruz said. US President Joe Biden called for new gun restrictions in an address to the nation hours after the attack. “As a nation we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done?” Biden asked. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” Many of those who were wounded were rushed to Uvalde Memorial Hospital, where staff members in scrubs and relatives could be seen weeping as they

Roadblocks in Pakistan thwart rally of ex-PM

ELECTION DEMANDS: Top government officials said that former PM Imran Khan would be arrested if the rally goes ahead as police officers massed near the road blocks

Pakistani authorities yesterday used dozens of shipping containers and trucks to block off major roads into the capital, Islamabad, after former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan said he would march with demonstrators to the city center for a rally he hopes will bring down the government and force early elections. The march has raised fears of violent clashes between supporters of Khan — the country’s top opposition leader — and security forces. Khan served as prime minister for more than three-and-a-half years until last month, when he was ousted by a no-confidence vote in parliament. Since then, he has held rallies with thousands of people across the country. Although yesterday’s demonstration was banned a day earlier, Khan said that it would be massive and peaceful, and would not end until the government agrees to hold fresh elections this year, not next year as scheduled. Khan said that his removal was the result of a US-organized plot in collusion with his successor, Shahbaz Sharif, whose government has vowed a stern response if Khan contravenes the ban. Washington has also denied any role in Pakistan’s internal politics. Overnight, authorities blocked the main highway into the city with shipping containers filled with earth, while similar obstacles sprung up on other routes into the city. Khan has urged his supporters to remove the containers and circumvent any blockades to enter the city. “I will be among you Wednesday afternoon,” he told a rally in front of parliament. Khan has already massed thousands of supporters along with leaders of his Tehreek-e-Insaf party in Peshawar. From there, his followers must cross a bridge at the province’s border that the government has blocked, before assembling on the outskirts of Islamabad for the march. The government launched a crackdown on his supporters ahead of the march, arresting hundreds across the country. They have deployed additional police and paramilitary troops on

Shoot-out in Rio favela kills more than 20

Police in Rio de Janeiro raided the Vila Cruzeiro favela before dawn on Tuesday, setting off a fierce firefight that authorities said killed more than 20 people. The operation was aimed at locating and arresting criminal leaders, some from other states, police said in a statement. The statement said that officers were fired on while preparing their incursion, and that one resident had been shot and killed on site. Local media reported that the person was a 41-year-old woman who was hit by a stray bullet. The police statement said 11 people also were found wounded after the shoot-out and taken to a nearby state hospital, but as the day wore on, residents used their own vehicles to carry more people with gunshot wounds to the same hospital — most of whom were already dead. The operation was conducted jointly by the military police and federal highway police. Officers seized 16 vehicles and 13 automatic rifles, as well as pistols and grenades, the police statement said. By late on Tuesday, 21 corpses had arrived at the hospital and seven people were receiving treatment for injuries, the state’s health secretariat said in an e-mailed statement. That makes the incident one of Rio de Janeiro’s deadliest police operations. It comes one year after a raid of the Jacarezinho favela that left 28 people dead, prompting claims of abuse and summary executions. Earlier this year, the Brazilian Supreme Court established a series of conditions for police to conduct raids in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. The court ruled that lethal force should only be used in situations in which all other means have been exhausted and when necessary to protect life, and gave police 180 days to install devices to record audio and video on their uniforms and vehicles. Authorities on Tuesday had sought to intercept gang members outside the neighborhood, which was not possible

Tedros reappointed as head of WHO at Geneva event

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first African to head the WHO, was re-elected on Tuesday, tearfully accepting a second term as he recalled his humble upbringing as “a child of war” and pleading for peace. His re-election was announced at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland, after he received more than two-thirds of secret-ballot votes cast, as needed to be appointed. The WHO did not provide a breakdown, but sources in the room said that he had received 155 of the 160 votes cast. “I am really, really overwhelmed by the support,” Tedros told the WHA. “I am really proud to be WHO.” The former Ethiopian minister of health and of foreign affairs has become a familiar face worldwide as he spearheads the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 57-year-old malaria expert has also increasingly been sounding the alarm over the heavy toll that conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are taking on global health. After accepting his re-election, Tedros made an impassioned and personal plea for peace. He said that he himself had been “a child of war ... from a poor family.” He recalled experiencing conflict at a young age and also losing his younger brother to disease. “That I was spared was just pure luck. It could have been me, I could have died more than 50 years ago,” he said, describing how the strong emotions from that time rushed back during a visit to Ukraine.

Vietnamese hacker becomes cyberagent

At the height of his career, Vietnamese hacker Ngo Minh Hieu made a fortune stealing the personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans. Now he has been recruited by his own government to hunt the kind of cybercriminal he once used to be. After serving seven years in US prisons for stealing the personal details of about 200 million Americans, Ngo was sent back to Vietnam, which imposes some of the world’s strictest curbs on online freedom. Ngo said that he has since turned his back on his criminal past. “I fell to the bottom, now I am trying to climb up again,” the 32-year-old said. “Though I don’t earn much now, I have peace instead.” However, his transformation is complicated. Ngo said that his new job involves educating Vietnamese about the dangers of the same sort of hacking he perpetrated, but he is also working on cybersecurity for the government of a one-party state that cracks down ruthlessly on dissent, harassing and arresting people for posting critical opinions online. Nicknamed HieuPC when he was 12, Ngo was fascinated by computers as soon as he first laid his hands on one, but he was soon racking up US$1,000 fines for stealing Internet connections for his own personal use. He began hacking into foreign bank accounts, netting up to US$600 a day in high school and using the money to study cybersecurity in New Zealand. Ngo was forced to return home in 2010 after hacking his university and selling students’ personal information, and his illegal activities spiraled. In his 20s, he made US$100,000 a month hacking and selling about 200 million US social security numbers. “I was on the top of success. I was over-proud of myself. I wanted more villas, more apartments, more luxurious cars,” Ngo said. Then, in February 2013, he was lured to the US in a sting operation

World News Quick Take

UNITED STATES Bush plotter arrested An Iraqi man who applied for asylum two years ago hatched a plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush in retaliation for casualties against his compatriots during the Iraq war, the government said on Tuesday. Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, 52, also schemed to smuggle other Iraqis into the nation from Mexico to aid in the plot, after which they were to have been smuggled back out through Mexico, said a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Columbus, Ohio. Shihab insinuated that he had contacts with the Islamic State group, but it did not appear that the plot came close to materializing, with confidential informants briefing the FBI from April last year through this month, the complaint said. If convicted, Shihab could face up to 30 years in prison and US$500,000 in fines. “President Bush has all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities,” said Freddy Ford, the chief of staff at the 75-year-old former president’s office. NORTH KOREA Three missiles launched Pyongyang yesterday fired a volley of missiles, including a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile, just hours after US President Joe Biden left Asia. Three missiles were fired from the Sunan area in the capital, where an airfield has become a key site used in multiple recent weapons, South Korean officials said. The launch, one of nearly 20 weapons tests by Pyongyang so far this year, prompted joint US-South Korea live fire missile drills in response, as both sides slammed what they called continued “provocations” by the nuclear-armed state. The tests are “an illegal act in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions,” Seoul said. The US condemned the “destabilizing” launches and called for Pyongyang to “engage in sustained and substantive dialogue,” a US Department of State spokesman