UNITED STATES
May Day arrests in Seattle
Seattle police on Sunday evening used pepper spray to disperse black-clad anti-capitalist protesters authorities say threw rocks, flares, bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers during a rowdy May Day gathering. Eight men ranging in age from about 20 to 32 were charged, along with a teenaged girl, police said. Authorities said five officers were hurt, none seriously. The clashes followed a peaceful march earlier in the day by advocates for workers and immigrants, just one of several events in cities nationwide to call for better wages for workers, an end to deportations and support for President Barack Obama’s administration plan to give work permits to immigrants in the country illegally whose children are citizens. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray blamed the “senseless violence” on a “different crowd” from those who had attended the earlier march.
UNITED KINGDOM
Adams criticized for tweets
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams late on Sunday used a racial slur on his Twitter account, days before his party is to contest regional elections in Northern Ireland.
His tweet compared a former slave’s struggle against slave-owners in the Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained with the treatment of Irish nationalists in a Catholic area of Belfast, Ballymurphy. “Watching Django Unchained — A Ballymurphy Nigger!” Adams tweeted. A second message read “Django — an uppity Fenian!” The tweets were deleted shortly after being posted, but had already been widely shared and criticized. Reacting to the furor, Adams said his use of the “N-word” was ironic. “Anyone who has seen the film, as I did last evening, and who is familiar with the plight of nationalists in the north until recently, would know that my tweets about the film and the use of the N-word were ironic and not intended to cause any offence whatsoever,” he said in a Sinn Fein statement. “Attempts to suggest that I am a racist are without credibility. I am opposed to racism and have been all my life.” Ballymurphy is known as the site of 1971 killings of civilians by British soldiers.
COLOMBIA
Peruvian gangster deported
The government on Sunday deported top Peruvian crime lord Gerson Galvez, a day after arresting the man described as the new version of Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Galvez, also known as Caracol (Snail), was arrested in a restaurant in Medellin, the Ministry of Defense said late on Saturday. He was handed over to Peruvian authorities because of his “dangerousness” and flown back to his home country, National Police Chief Jorge Nieto told a press conference. President Juan Manuel Santos congratulated the police on Twitter, describing Galvez as “one of the most feared crime capos in the region.”
SOUTH AFRICA
Lions explore new home
Lions rescued from circuses in Colombia and Peru on Sunday scratched their manes on trees and explored their new territory bush after being released into a sanctuary north of Johannesburg. One of the 33 lions, a male known as Zeus, let out a mighty roar before stepping out of his cage into an enclosure where he will spend the coming months being monitored by a vet. The lions arrived at the Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary shortly after dawn on Sunday, ending a two-day journey from South America.
Many of them had teeth and their claws removed by their circus owners so they will remain in enclosures and can never be released into the wild.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
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