POLAND
Beatification celebrated
Across this heavily Roman Catholic country, the faithful are voicing joy and pride at tomorrow’s scheduled beatification of local-born former pope John Paul II. Many pilgrims are boarding buses and trains for the 30-hour journey to Rome for the ceremony, while others are expected to fill squares in Warsaw, Krakow and his hometown of Wadowice to follow the service on large video screens. The atmosphere of celebration contrasts sharply with the deep sense of mourning after John Paul II died in 2005. Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood, and many hope that the beatification will be followed by a speedy canonization.
RUSSIA
Two found guilty in killings
A Moscow court on Thursday found two members from a small ultra-nationalist group guilty of the 2009 murder of a renowned Russian lawyer and a journalist close to the opposition, news agencies reported. A jury found Nikita Tikhonov, 31, guilty of committing the twin murder, and his companion Yevgenia Khasis, 26, of complicity in the crimes. The court also said the pair had “unidentified accomplices.” Human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, 34, and 25-year-old journalist Anastasia Baburova, who worked for the Novaya Gazeta, were gunned down in broad daylight on the way to the Moscow metro on Jan. 19, 2009.
FRANCE
Air controller killed at work
An air traffic controller was found stabbed to death and lying in a pool of his own blood in the secure control tower at the airport where he worked, authorities said on Wednesday. Police said the man was found on Wednesday morning in an office adjoining the control room on the tenth floor of the tower at Basel-Mulhouse airport, a joint Swiss-French air hub in the east of the country. The killer had stabbed him three times in the throat, lung and chest, police sources said, adding that the killing took place in a secure zone accessible only with an identity badge. Prosecutors launched a murder investigation. A spokesman for the airport said the victim was a married 34-year-old father of one and was in charge of the tower.
ITALY
Search for ‘Mona Lisa’ starts
Researchers have begun looking for the remains of a Renaissance woman many believed posed for the Mona Lisa. The researchers used a geo-radar device on Wednesday to search for underground tombs in a Florence convent where Lisa Gherardini is believed to be buried. Tradition has long linked Gherardini, the wife of a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting. Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist and biographer of Leonardo, wrote that Leonardo painted a portrait of del Giocondo’s wife. Gherardini is believed to have died in 1542.
GERMANY
Police shoot dog’s victim
A woman who escaped without serious injury from a dog attack was inadvertently accidentally shot by police while she hid from the animal behind a door, police said on Wednesday. Police in Berlin shot the dog dead, but a stray bullet went through the door behind which the woman was cowering, striking her in the arm. The woman was not seriously injured. She had gone to visit neighbors at their apartment on Tuesday evening when their two-year-old dog Carlito attacked her. A police officer was also grazed in the throat by a ricocheting bullet. Police are considering charges against the dog’s owner and the police officers who fired the shots.
UNITED STATES
Kidnap couple plead guilty
A California couple pleaded guilty on Thursday to kidnapping a schoolgirl and raping her repeatedly while captive for almost two decades, in a deal welcomed by the now 30-year-old victim. Phillip Garrido, who fathered two children with Jaycee Dugard after kidnapping her aged 11 in 1991, and his wife, Nancy, entered the pleas in an unexpected move after their lawyers hammered out an agreement. Dugard’s long ordeal in captivity with paroled sex offender Garrido and his wife came to light when she was freed in August 2009, 18 years after she was snatched at the age of 11 while walking to a school bus stop.
UNITED STATES
Rwandan goes on trial
An octogenarian Rwandan went on trial in Kansas on Tuesday, accused of lying about his role in the 1994 genocide in his home country to secure US citizenship. Lazare Kobagaya, 84, a diminutive man with a graying mustache, walked with a cane into the Wichita courthouse accompanied by a half-dozen family members. He listened to the proceedings with the aid of an interpreter, although he introduced himself at the start of jury selection in English, saying: “My name is Lazare Kobagaya.” Kobagaya moved to Kansas in 2005 to join family members. Prosecutors allege Kobagaya lied on his December 2005 citizenship application by denying he had participated in the genocide and falsifying other aspects of his background.
UNITED STATES
Obama lauds Panama deal
US President Barack Obama commended Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli for his leadership in resolving issues that had stalled a major free-trade agreement between the two countries. Obama says he is confident that the deal will be good for the economy in both countries. He spoke in the Oval Office alongside Martinelli. The two countries reached agreement on the pact this month after the Panamanian government signed off on a provision to deter would-be tax evaders from using its banks as tax havens.
UNITED STATES
Superman done with the US
Superman, citizen of the world? The Man of Steel, in the latest issue of Action Comics, which hit newsstands on Wednesday, said he intends to renounce his US citizenship in a speech before the UN. “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of USpolicy,” Superman said in a short story in the issue. In the comic, Superman never actually renounces his citizenship, he only talks about his plans to do that. However, conservative commentators reacted with disgust to the new storyline, given that the fictional superhero has long proclaimed he stood for “Truth, Justice and the American way.” In a blog post at The Weekly Standard, writer Jonathan Last questioned Superman’s beliefs, now that he seems to have rejected the US. “Does he believe in British interventionism or Swiss neutrality?” Last wrote.
UNITED STATES
Aretha sings on TV
“Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin sang two songs on The View on Thursday in her first national TV performance since a mysterious ailment that sidelined her last year. Franklin, 69, who says she has lost 38.5kg since last year, performed a new single, How Long I’ve Been Waiting, and her classic hit Respect. Last November she canceled all her concert appearances for six months on doctors’ orders and later underwent major surgery. She has never made public the nature of surgery, or the reason for it.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
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