BRITAIN
Rowling chair goes on sale
A chair J.K. Rowling used to write the first two volumes of her best-selling Harry Potter series is today to sell at an auction in New York. Pre-auction bidding via the Internet had on Monday reached US$65,000 for the modest 1930s-era oak chair, on which Rowling, 50, sat while writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the first two of seven volumes. Rowling received the chair — one of a mismatched set of four — free when she was a young single mother living in subsidized housing in Edinburgh. “This was the comfiest one, which is why it ended up stationed permanently in front of my typewriter, supporting me while I typed,” Rowling wrote in a letter accompanying the chair, the auction house conducting the sale, Heritage Auctions, wrote on its Web site.
THE NETHERLANDS
Police crack down on drugs
Hundreds of police on Monday raided about 100 premises in a swoop on drug gangs in the nation’s south, prosecutors said. Fifty-five suspects were detained in Operation Meeting Point, prosecutors said in a statement, adding that 111 homes and commercial properties had been searched. “Around 1,500 police and law enforcement officers are involved,” the statement said, adding that the operation targeted drug production, particularly cannabis and ecstasy. Police raided a suspected meeting place for criminal gangs at a business in the small village of Best, outside Eindhoven, which had been under close surveillance for several years. “Some 700 people visited this meeting place. They will all be intensely scrutinized to see whether they are guilty of any offenses,” prosecutors said. “Police used surveillance of the premises to initiate other investigations, in which suspects were arrested, weapons found, drugs intercepted and drug labs and cannabis plantations closed down.”
UNITED STATES
op court to rule on juries
The Supreme Court on Monday said it would examine a case involving alleged racial bias during jury deliberations of a Hispanic man’s sex crimes trial. The case is to center around two core concepts of the judicial system: that defendants have the right to be tried by an impartial jury and that a jury’s deliberations are secret. Miguel Angel Pena Rodriguez was convicted of unlawful sexual contact and harassment in a 2007 incident involving two teenage girls at a racetrack in Denver, Colorado. After the conviction, one of the jurors reported to Pena Rodriguez’s lawyer that another juror made racist statements during the deliberations.
UNITED STATES
IRS warns of phishing scams
As tax season draws to a close, authorities are warning of an alarming rise in phishing scams designed to steal sensitive personal and financial information. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) earlier this year said it has noticed “an approximate 400 percent surge in phishing and malware incidents so far in the 2016 tax season,” and warned of new fraud schemes that aim to get businesses, as well as taxpayers, to turn over personal information. Phishing refers to fraudulent e-mails disguised to appear to come from associates or officials, and ask for information such as passwords or personal information that can be used for identity theft or other fraud schemes. One of the newer schemes targets payroll and human resources professionals with fake e-mails that appear to come from company executives requesting personal information on employees, the agency warned last month.
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
RSS