UNITED STATES
Veteran held hostage
A New York man is accused of holding an 81-year-old Marine Corps veteran hostage in a motel for at least four years to steal his benefits checks. Perry Coniglio, 43, was arrested on Tuesday in his room adjoining the victim’s at a motel in Highlands, New York. The motel is next door to the Hudson Valley town’s police station. Police said Coniglio used brute force and intimidation to get the veteran, who received three checks every month, to cooperate with him. The victim has been taken to a hospital for evaluation. Coniglio was being held in jail on Thursday.
UNITED STATES
New York celebrates Mozart
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is celebrating Mozart with special performances at three subway stations. Yesterday’s performances were to start at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ annual Mostly Mozart Festival. Performances at Fulton Center could be viewed on Facebook Live via Lincoln Center’s Facebook page. The Mostly Mozart Festival is a series of concerts at the Lincoln Center and other New York City venues.
UNITED STATES
Medics charged over selfies
Authorities said two paramedics engaged in a “selfie war” by taking pictures with incapacitated patients. The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said in a news release that Kayla Renee Dubois, 24, was arrested on Thursday, and charged with two counts of interception and disclosure of oral communications. Authorities have issued arrest warrants for Christopher Wimmer, 33, on seven counts of the same charge. The release said Wimmer also faces a misdemeanor battery charge for holding open the eyelid of a sedated patient. It said the selfies included 41 patients, three of whom apparently agreed to the photographs.
UNITED STATES
Dark matter remains elusive
Scientists have come up empty-handed in their latest effort to find dark matter — stuff that is theorized to hold galaxies together. For three years scientists have been looking for dark matter nearly 1.6km underground in a former gold mine in South Dakota. They announced on Thursday that despite sensitive equipment working better than expected, they could not find the invisible particles that the Big Bang theory says makes up four-fifths of the universe’s matter. The US$10 million mine project, called the Large Underground Xenon experiment, was one of three places looking for dark matter, along with the International Space Station and Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.
HONG KONG
‘Triad boss’ arrested
An alleged triad boss known as “Shanghai Boy” has been arrested after arriving at Hong Kong International Airport from Thailand, months after he made headlines for being punched in the face at the territory’s most famous luxury hotel. Kwok Wing-hung (郭永鴻) was detained on Thursday night for “conspiracy to commit criminal intimidation, conspiracy to wound with intent and conspiracy to blackmail,” police said in a statement yesterday. Famed for his ever-present 1970s-style sunglasses and swept-forward bowl haircut, Kwok, 58, had dropped off the radar for seven months, local media said. He had been put on a police wanted list and was arrested at the airport by officers from the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau, the South China Morning Post reported.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS