UNITED STATES
Library lifts Twain book ban
A Massachusetts library has put the Mark Twain work Eve’s Diary back on the shelf more than a century after it was banned. The Charlton Public Library’s trustees this week unanimously voted to return the book to circulation, reversing the board’s 1906 decision to ban the 1905 short story. Trustee Richard Whitehead said the move was made to coincide with the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. The story was written from the perspective of the biblical Adam and Eve. It was banned because trustee Frank Wakefield objected to nude illustrations of Eve.
ITALY
‘Living statue’ ban mulled
Culture officials in Rome are mulling a ban on “living statues,” arguing that dressing up in costume and standing on the street to solicit spare change has no artistic merit, media reported on Friday. “Living statues demonstrate no artistic activity, to the extent that they can’t be compared to mimes, and they amount to a veritable racket,” said Federico Mollicone, deputy culture head in Rome’s mayorship. The proposed ban is part of a broader bill from Mollicone’s office, which aims to regulate activity on Rome’s streets, reports said. Under the proposal, street musicians could have their instruments or speakers confiscated, and “deafening” music would be banned after 10pm.
UNITED STATES
Former drug czar jailed
A federal judge in Miami on Friday sentenced Bolivia’s former anti-drug czar to 14 years prison on drug trafficking charges, court sources said. General Rene Sanabria, who was Bolivian President Evo Morales’s top anti-drug official from 2007 to 2008, was arrested in Panama in February and extradited to Miami to face the charges. US District Judge Ursula Ungaro also sentenced Sanabria’s accomplice, Marcelo Foronda, to nine years in prison. According to trial testimony by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), last year Foronda made contact with US agents posing as Colombian drug traffickers who offered to distribute cocaine in Florida. Sanabria agreed to make sure the shipment was protected. In September last year, 144kg of cocaine was shipped to Miami.
COLOMBIA
Coal mine death toll rises
The death toll from an explosion at a coal mine in the north, believed to have been caused by an accumulation of methane gas, has risen to seven, authorities said on Friday. The country’s mining regulator Ingeominas had last put the death toll from Wednesday’s incident at El Diamante mine in the town of Socha at three. Emergency personnel subsequently retrieved the bodies of four more miners who had been trapped under the rubble, Ingeominas said.
UNITED STATES
US$16 muffin claim denied
Auditor claims of a whopping US$16 per muffin at a US government seminar are half-baked, the global hotel chain Hilton said on Friday. In a report, auditors at the Justice Department said the muffins were among several “extravagant and potentially wasteful” food items served at the training conference in August 2009 at the Capital Hilton in Washington. Not true, Hilton Worldwide shot back in a statement. “In Washington, the contracted breakfast included fresh fruit, coffee, juice, muffins, tax and gratuity, for an inclusive price of US$16 per person,” said the corporate parent of the Hilton, Conrad and Waldorf Astoria hotels. The inspector general’s office of the Justice Department said it stood by the 148-page report.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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