UNITED STATES
Federal prisons emptier
The federal prison population has declined for the first time since 1980 following last year’s major reforms led by Attorney General Eric Holder, officials said on Tuesday. The number of inmates slid by 4,800 in the past year and is expected to keep declining over the next two decades, losing the equivalent of six federal prisons — or 10,000 inmates — by about 2016. The population behind bars in federal facilities is about 215,000, according to latest official figures. Holder hailed the decrease as “a paradigm shift.” “Criminal justice reform is an idea whose time has come,” he said. The US has 5 percent of the world’s population, but is home to almost a quarter of all prisoners behind bars globally, according to Holder, who called for a more balanced approach to incarceration.
UNITED STATES
Right-wing author sentenced
Conservative author and firebrand Dinesh D’Souza, a forceful critic of President Barack Obama, was fined US$30,000 and sentenced on Tuesday to five years’ probation for violating US campaign financing laws. D’Souza, 53, is to serve eight months during the first year of his sentence in a “community confinement center,” where he will be allowed to leave for work each day, but required to return in the evening. In January, D’Souza was charged with violating laws that limit the amount individuals can donate to political campaigns, and with making false statements. The Republican pundit pleaded guilty on May 20 of attempting to donate US$20,000 to a Senate campaign through straw donors by offering to reimburse associates who sent in the money.
VENEZUELA
Beauty’s killers go to jail
Three men were sentenced to more than 20 years in prison in Venezuela on Tuesday over the killing of an ex-beauty queen and her partner. All three, aged 18, 19 and 21, pleaded guilty to the crime. The victims in the January roadside robbery and shooting were former beauty queen Monica Spear and her partner, Thomas Berry. The three sentenced were among 10 people charged with the crime. Two of them were minors. Spear was Miss Venezuela in 2004. In a robbery turned violent, she and Berry were shot to death in their car on Jan. 6 in front of their five-year-old daughter, Maya, on a road in the north of the violence-plagued country. The killings caused President Nicolas Maduro to move up implementation of a nationwide anti-crime plan. The UN says Venezuela suffers from a homicide rate of 53 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the second-most violent country in the world after Honduras.
GREECE
Families want Syrian orphan
Dozens of families have offered to adopt a Syrian toddler who survived the “mass murder” of a migrant shipwreck in which 500 people were deliberately drowned, Greek authorities said on Tuesday. The little girl, believed to be between 17 and 19 months old, survived three days in the water under the hot Mediterranean sun in the arms of a 19-year-old Syrian woman wearing a life jacket. Her parents perished. Traffickers allegedly drowned the migrants — who may have included up to 100 other children — off Malta by ramming their rickety boat when they refused to move to an even smaller vessel on Sept. 6. “Dozens of Greeks call every day to be informed about the state of health of the child and to express their wish to adopt her,” said Lena Borboudakis, deputy director of Heraklion Hospital in Crete, where the child — called Massar — is being treated.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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