UNITED STATES
Deer dies amid dispute
A white-tailed deer that went from being a minor celebrity in Harlem, New York, to a cause celebre after its capture, died in captivity on Friday, moments before it was to be driven upstate and released. The preliminary causes of death, according to a city parks spokesman, were stress and the day-and-a-half that the deer spent at a city animal shelter in East Harlem. “Unfortunately because of the time we had to wait for DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation] to come and transport the deer, the deer has perished. This was an animal that was under a great deal of stress for the past 24 hours and had been tranquilized for much of that time,” city parks spokesman Sam Biederman, said.
SOUTH KOREA
Protests switch focus
Protesters yesterday began gathering in the streets of Seoul for the eighth straight week, pushing their demands for the swift and permanent removal of impeached President Park Geun-hye. Organizers said the mass rally would march on the Constitutional Court whose nine justices are considering the validity of the impeachment bill passed by the national assembly more than a week ago. The court has 180 days to make a ruling. The protesters are adamant that Park should resign immediately and face criminal prosecution.
INDIA
Dalai Lama meeting panned
The government has objected to the Dalai Lama meeting with Indian President Pranab Mukherjee earlier this month, saying the talks had negatively impacted ties between the Asian neighbors. “The Chinese side is firmly opposed to any form of contacts between officials of other countries with him [the Dalai Lama],” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) told a media briefing on Friday. “We urge the Indian side to ... fully respect China’s core interest and major concerns, [and] take effective means to remove the negative impact caused by the incident, so as to avoid disturbance to the China-India relationship.”
SYRIA
Thousands trapped in Aleppo
The evacuation of residents from the last rebel-held section in the devastated city of Aleppo broke down on Friday with thousands of people still trapped inside, as concern escalated about their fate. The breakdown came as Russia claimed, incorrectly, that all civilians wishing to leave had already been evacuated and that only “irreconcilable” fighters remained, further raising fears among those still trapped. Buses had been taking civilians and fighters out of the shrinking rebel area under a deal struck between Russia, which backs the Syrian government, and Turkey, which supports the rebels.
AUSTRALIA
Four survive crash-landing
Four people, including a child, have been winched to safety following a helicopter crash-landing in bushland near Sydney. The helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in the Royal National Park near Bundeena, 30km south of Sydney, yesterday morning. Four people were on board, including a three-year-old boy, all related to the pilot. Rescue helicopter spokesman Steve Leahy said the small helicopter had been flying off the coast of southern Sydney just after 10am when its engine malfunctioned. The pilot was able to direct the aircraft back to land and it made an emergency landing in thick scrub, about 1km from Jibbon Beach.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS