UNITED STATES
Jeb Bush quits board posts
Potential Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has resigned from all of his corporate and nonprofit board member positions, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, as the former Florida governor explores a run for the White House. The Post, citing a statement e-mailed to the newspaper by one of Bush’s aides late on New Year’s Eve, said he even stepped down from the board of his education foundation. The statement added that he was still evaluating next steps for businesses for which he serves as an owner or principal partner, including consulting firm Jeb Bush & Associates, the Post reported.
UNITED STATES
Judge rejects trial delay
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a request by Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to further postpone his highly anticipated trial, meaning jury selection will begin next week. The judge also denied a motion by Tsarnaev’s lawyers to move the trial — set to begin on Monday and expected to last several months — outside the northeastern city. Tsarnaev, 21, faces the death penalty if convicted over the April 15, 2013, attacks on the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded 264.
UNITED STATES
Executions called off
The governor of Maryland commuted the sentences for the state’s four remaining death-row inmates on Wednesday, a year and a half after capital punishment was abolished there. Governor Martin O’Malley said he had reduced the sentences to life in prison without parole Even though the four were sentenced before the death penalty was abolished, Maryland’s attorney general determined the executions would be illegal under the ban, announced in May 2013.
FRANCE
Laxative pranksters expelled
Two young members of the National Front have been expelled from the party for spiking the drink of its second-in-command with a laxative. The incident took place while National Front Vice President Louis Aliot, who is the boyfriend of party leader Marine Le Pen, was visiting the party’s Bordeaux offices several months ago. Confirming a report in Sud-Ouest daily, party deputy secretary-general Nicolas Bay told reporters that three party members sought to disrupt the meeting by slipping a laxative into Aliot’s wine glass. According to Sud-Ouest they also unscrewed the light bulbs in a room where Aliot planned to hold a press conference. Bay accused the trio, who were hauled before the party’s dispute resolution commission, of “destabilization maneuvers.” The third prankster received a lesser punishment of a one-year suspension.
ISRAEL
Immigration figures rise
The number of Jews moving to the nation leaped last year to its highest figure in a decade, with western Europe leading the way, the Ministry of Immigration said on Wednesday. Immigration hit a 10-year high, with the arrival of about 26,500 new residents, according to a joint statement with the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental organization tasked with encouraging Jews to immigrate. This marks a significant 32 percent increase over 2013’s approximately 20,000 immigrants, the statement said. This “was a year of record-breaking aliyah,” Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky said, using the Hebrew word for immigration to Israel.
PHILIPPINES
Revelry hurts hundreds
Firecrackers and gunfire during New Year revelry in the country left 354 people injured, with more than a dozen requiring amputations, including a five-year-old boy, Secretary of Health Janette Garin said yesterday. The annual tide of injuries during New Year celebrations dropped to the lowest in five years, with 351 people hurt by fireworks and three hit by stray bullets in the last few days of last year, Garin said. However, the number of people who had to undergo amputations surged to 14 from eight the previous year, she said, adding that a five-year-old boy lost his hand. Garin said the health department’s campaign against indiscriminate fireworks and the passage of Tropical Storm Jangmi, which brought heavy rains to the central and southern islands, had brought down the injury toll.
JAPAN
Newborn numbers hit low
The estimated number of newborn babies last year fell to 1.001 million, the lowest figure on record, further contributing to the aging and shrinking of the country’s population, official data showed yesterday. The number marked an all-time low for the fourth straight year, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said, while the estimated number of people who died last year totaled 1.269 million, rising for the fifth straight year. The number of newborn babies could fall below 1 million in revised data that is to be released later because of an anticipated margin of error of 1,000, local reports said.
NIGERIA
Female bomber killed
A female suicide bomber was killed as she tried to enter a military barracks in the strife-torn northeast on Wednesday, eyewitnesses said. Soldiers opened fire on the woman, who was wearing a hijab, after she refused to be searched as she approached the barracks in Bolari, and the shots detonated the explosives belt she was wearing, according to the accounts. She was killed immediately.
INDIA
Terror drill draws flak
Police in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat faced widespread criticism yesterday after staging an anti-terrorism exercise featuring “militants” dressed up as Muslims. A video of the drill, which was broadcast on media Web sites, shows five policemen capturing and then pinning down three men in white knitted skullcaps before bundling them into jeeps. The exercise earlier this week was in preparation for a Jan. 11- to Jan. 13 investment summit in Gujarat, whose speakers will include US Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as Modi himself. Kamal Faruqui of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board termed the mock drill “atrocious and highly condemnable.” “It is profiling the Muslim community, which is very bad. They should apologize, otherwise they should be taken to the court,” Faruqui told NDTV news channel.
AFGHANISTAN
Army mortars kill 20
Army mortar rounds killed at least 20 civilians and wounded scores attending a wedding party in Helmand, provincial officials said yesterday. General Mahmoud, deputy commander of the Afghan 215 corps in the province, said artillery was fired from three directions at a village in Sangin District, where the wedding was held on Wednesday. Deputy provincial chief Gul Pasha Bakhtiar said 26 civilians, including women and children, were killed and 41 wounded by mortar shells fired from the army side.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
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