INDIA
Villagers behead ‘witch’
A 63-year-old woman was dismembered and beheaded by machete-wielding villagers who accused her of practicing witchcraft, police said yesterday. Seven people have been arrested over the death of Moni Orang, a mother of five who was seized from her home in Assam state on Monday after local priests said she was casting spells. “The attackers, armed with machetes and other crude implements, descended on the village and took away Moni Orang from her house and then brutally killed her,” senior police official Manabendra Dev Roy said. “She was decapitated and her limbs were chopped off.” Yesterday, villagers stormed the local police station to protest against the arrests. “Moni was a witch and had cast evil spells on her enemies,” villager Kiran Teronpi said on local TV. “There is no place for such sorcerers and so her killing is justified.”
MEXICO
Probe implicates soldiers
Military investigators have found evidence showing that soldiers were likely involved in the disappearance of seven young people in Zacatecas state, the Secretariat of National Defense said on Monday. Relatives of the two women and five men have told local media that they were detained by soldiers in a house in the town of Calera on July 7. Their bodies were found in a neighboring town with signs of torture and execution-style bullet wounds to the head over the weekend, or 11 days later, according to their families. The secretariat said in a statement that military prosecutors “found evidence of a probable participation of military personnel” in connection with “the disappearance” of the group.
UNITED STATES
Sleep linked to Alzheimer’s
New research suggests poor sleep might increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease by spurring a brain-clogging gunk that in turn further interrupts shut-eye. Disrupted sleep might be one of the missing pieces in explaining how a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, a sticky protein called beta-amyloid, starts its damage long before people have trouble with memory, researchers said on Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference. “It’s very clear that sleep disruption is an underappreciated factor,” said Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, who presented data linking amyloid levels with people’s sleep and memory performance. “It’s a new player on the scene that increases risk of Alzheimer’s disease.” The new research suggests that sleep problems actually interact with some of the disease processes involved in Alzheimer’s, and that those toxic proteins in turn affect the deep sleep that is so important for memory formation.
RUSSIA
Selfie destroys Lenin statue
A statue of Vladimir Lenin, headless after an attack by a drunk man, has now lost its torso after a selfie-happy Siberian tried to pose alongside the image of the iconic Soviet leader, a local official said on Monday. “A young man wanted to have his picture with Lenin, so he climbed up onto the monument’s pedestal,” the official from Siberia’s Moryakovsky village said on condition of anonymity. “He then lost his balance and hung on by grabbing Lenin’s torso.” Both the torso and the selfie-taker then fell down, with the latter ending up in the hospital with a fractured leg and wrist, the official added. Dozens of people in the country have been killed in selfie-related accidents since the beginning of the year, the police have said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
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
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘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
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