HAITI
Parliament backs PM choice
Parliament on Friday approved the interim leader’s second nominee for prime minister, taking a critical step toward concluding postponed elections. The lower house Chamber of Deputies voted in favor of Enex Jean-Charles serving as a transitional government’s prime minister with a 78-1 vote. Two deputies abstained. The Senate unanimously ratified Jean-Charles’ policy statement late on Thursday. President Jocelerme Privert chose the US-educated administrative law professor and veteran presidential adviser earlier this week after his first choice, economist Fritz Jean, was rejected by a majority of deputies.
UNITED STATES
Colleges report hate hack
Several colleges across the nation are investigating after a rash of anti-Semitic fliers began printing from their network-connected printers or fax machines. The fliers began to appear on Thursday at institutions including Princeton University; Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island; the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “Princeton attaches great importance to mutual respect and we deplore expressions of hatred directed against any individual or group,” the university’s vice provost for institutional equity and inclusion Michele Minter said in a statement. Robert Trestan, director of the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League, said a white-power group appears to have hacked into university printers. He said that was a new tactic for such a group. The fliers are addressed to “white men” and disparage Jewish people. They include links to a neo-Nazi Web site. Trestan said the founder of the Web site previously urged supporters to “troll” perceived enemies, including a Jewish member of the British Parliament, Luciana Berger, on Twitter. He said other affected universities include Smith College in Massachusetts; the University of California, Santa Cruz; Northeastern University in Boston; the University of Rhode Island; the University of Connecticut; DePaul University in Chicago; and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
UNITED STATES
‘Planet Snoop’ launched
Snoop Dogg heard the call of the wild, and he responded. The rapper is providing commentary for nature and other videos on Planet Snoop, a new series on his Merry Jane Web site. The world learned of Snoop Dogg’s skill as a nature host when his parodies of the Plant Earth documentary series aired on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. A petition titled “Get Snoop Dogg to Narrate Whole Season of Planet Earth” drew more than 75,000 signatures, according to the Web site, and “Planet Snoop” was born.
UNITED STATES
Anchorage man sentenced
A 45-year-old Anchorage man has been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for attempted sexual exploitation of children and attempted foreign travel for illicit sexual conduct. Federal prosecutors in an announcement said Jason Jayavarman attempted to arrange a child sex tourism trip for himself and others to Cambodia. He was convicted in March last year. Prosecutors at Jayavarman’s trial presented evidence that he made 12 trips to Cambodia before his arrest in 2013 and made videos of himself engaging in sexual acts with a person he believed was a child. An undercover FBI agent collected evidence indicating Jayavarman planned another trip for himself and others and explained to a potential traveler how to groom a child for sex and avoid arrest.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened