UNITED STATES
Explosive cameras found
Police have found two improvised explosive devices in the woods of Harlan County, Kentucky, a week after a man accused of placing the explosives was killed during a search for them. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Mark Sawaf was arrested in June, accused of concealing explosives in trail cameras and leaving them in the woods. Sawaf had been ordered to remain in custody until trial, but was brought to the woods just more than a week ago to help law enforcement find other explosives. Kentucky State Police Trooper Shane Jacobs has said a group that included officers from federal, state and local agencies had found several cameras — usually attached to trees — when Sawaf tried to escape. He was shot and killed during an altercation, Jacobs has said. Sawaf had owned and operated Harlan Counseling Inc since 2014 and had a master’s degree in mental health counseling. Authorities believe explosive devices were scattered over an approximately 8km radius in the eastern Kentucky woods.
UNITED STATES
Eatery shifts gun policy
A Utah restaurant known for kilt-clad servers who openly carry firearms will have to keep them under wraps starting this week. The staff at Sea Bears Ogden Fish House can only carry concealed weapons now that the eatery has relocated to the city’s historic Union Station. Officials with the Union Station Foundation are not allowing open carry of firearms, the Standard-Examiner of Ogden reported. Initially, the contract that foundation executive Elizabeth Sutton negotiated with Sea Bears permitted open-carry, but with conditions. They included owners and wait staff with firearms had to have undergone safety classes and background checks. Also, weapons had to be in holsters and guns could not be longer than 30cm. All weapons could not be permitted outside of the restaurant in other parts of Union Station. However, the Union Station Foundation received complaints that Sea Bears would retain its open-carry policy. As a result, Sutton exercised a provision that Union Station could ban open-carry altogether if the subject became an issue. “In this day and age, to see somebody carrying in public, you don’t know right away if it’s friendly or scary,” Sutton said.
UNITED STATES
Language requirement axed
The average New York City taxi driver might still be sassy, but will not be required to speak English any longer. The change is the result of a new law that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio signed in April and went into effect on Friday eliminating the English proficiency exam for taxi and for-hire vehicle drivers. It is the latest big change for cab drivers as policymakers and regulators try to adapt the city’s requirements to demographic and technological changes. The legislation created a single license for all taxicab and for-hire vehicles and eliminated the English-language proficiency test, according to a New York City Council Web site. The council described the requirement as “a significant barrier to entry to driving a taxi” in a statement announcing the bill and other related legislation in January. The commission is working with the mayor’s office on a potential education program that would include English-language vocabulary for drivers, a spokeswoman for commission said. The new law was part of a broader legislative package that also included a bill to require the commission to directly administer a health care services program.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
RSS