UNITED STATES
Three indicted for fraud
Three people, including the father of French train hero Spencer Stone, have been indicted in a scheme to set fire to commercial buildings in the Sacramento, California, area in order to collect insurance money. The indictment unsealed on Friday said that Jamal Shehadeh, 57, was the ringleader, setting seven fires at six commercial buildings where he operated businesses then collecting more than US$1.5 million in insurance proceeds from 2009 to 2013. His charges include seven counts of arson and 52 counts of mail and wire fraud. Prosecutors said that Stone’s 57-year-old father, Brian Stone, was a business consultant for Shehadeh and helped with the fraudulent insurance claims. He was charged with 13 counts of mail or wire fraud. A third defendant was charged with three counts of mail fraud.
UNITED KINGDOM
Iain Duncan Smith resigns
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith on Friday resigned over planned reductions to welfare payments for people with disabilities unveiled by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. “Changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they’ve been made are a compromise too far,” he wrote in a letter following uproar against the plans, including from lawmakers in his own governing Conservative Party. “While they are defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing deficit, they are not defensible in the way they were placed within a budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers,” said Duncan Smith, a former party leader and one of six senior ministers supporting a vote for Britain to leave the EU. Osborne on Wednesday told parliament the planned changes would cut about ￡1.3 billion (US$1.88 billion) per year off the bill for Personal Independence Payments, which aim to help people with long-term ill health or disabilities with extra costs.
UNITED STATES
‘Leaving a Mark’ release set
A children’s book written in part by an eight-year-old Rhode Island boy, whose dying wish to become famous in China echoed around the world, is to be released next week. Dorian Murray died last week after battling a rare form of pediatric cancer. The Boston Globe reported that author Nicole Cannella helped Murray write Leaving a Mark. The book aims to comfort other young cancer patients and fund cancer research. Dorian was given a digital copy of the book days before his death. The boy’s wish in January to be famous in China before he went to heaven took off on social media with the hashtag DStrong. People around the world, including celebrities Justin Bieber and Conan O’Brien, sent him photographs and well wishes.
PERU
Council mulls Fujimori ban
The electoral council said it was considering disqualifying front-runner Keiko Fujimori from next month’s presidential election for improperly distributing cash at a campaign event, just over a week after it tossed her main rival from the race. In a resolution on Friday, the council said there are sufficient grounds to open proceedings against Fujimori and gave her Popular Force party one working day to present counterarguments. The complaint against the daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori stems from a Feb. 14 campaign event, at which the candidate was present and money was awarded to the winners of a hip hop music contest. The law prohibits candidates from giving more than roughly US$6 during campaign events.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
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