UNITED STATES
Yiannopoulos apologizes
Polarizing right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos on Tuesday was by turns apologetic for comments he made about sexual relationships between boys and men, while adamant he had been the subject of “a cynical media witch hunt” as he spoke after resigning as an editor at Breitbart News. Yiannopoulos opened his remarks to reporters by saying two men, including a priest, had touched him inappropriately when he was between the ages of 13 and 16. “My experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous, but I understand that my usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor might have come across as flippancy, a lack of care for other victims or, worse, advocacy. I am horrified by that impression,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Theaters in ‘1984’ protest
Nearly 90 movie theaters in the US and Canada are planning to show the film 1984, an adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four starring the late John Hurt, in protest at President Donald Trump’s policies. The coordinated screenings are to take place on April 4, the date that the book’s central character, Winston Smith, writes on the first page of his illegal diary. “Orwell’s portrait of a government that manufactures their own facts, demands total obedience and demonizes foreign enemies has never been timelier,” the organizers of the protest said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Video shows Ford near miss
Video released on Tuesday showed a plane piloted by Harrison Ford suddenly and mistakenly flying low over an airliner with 110 people aboard at a Southern California airport. The 45 seconds of soundless video show the 74-year-old star’s potentially serious mishap at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. In it, an American Airlines 737 is taxiing slowly. Then Ford’s yellow, single-engine plane zooms in from the right of the frame, flying low over the airliner and casting its shadow down the middle of the bigger plane before landing on the taxiway. Ford was supposed to have landed on a runway that runs parallel to the taxiway.
UNITED STATES
Tanglewood to be expanded
The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home at Tanglewood, one of the premier outdoor venues in classical music, is to undergo a major expansion that is to include a year-round building. Nestled in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, the rustic 212 hectare estate has been the orchestra’s summer base since 1937. In a US$30 million expansion announced late on Tuesday, the orchestra plans to build four interconnected buildings that include a performance space, a lecture hall and a dining area meant to encourage interaction between musicians and visitors.
UNITED STATES
Bull gives cops runaround
A runaway bull led New York City police on a wild chase after escaping from a slaughterhouse on Tuesday, but the animal died after being cornered in a backyard, officials said. During the chase, TV news helicopter video footage showed one fruitless capture attempt after another in the borough of Queens. Police officers tried and failed to use their patrol cars to box the raging bull in and at one point it dashed away from one gathering of onlookers, only to rush toward others. No injuries were reported, but the videos, broadcast live online, made the plucky bull a social media star and Queens briefly became the top trending topic on Twitter.
UNITED KINGDOM
Extra famine aid pledged
The nation is to provide ￡100 million (US$125 million) each in additional aid money to South Sudan, where famine has been declared in parts of the country, and to Somalia, where there is a credible risk of famine, in 2017-2018, the government said yesterday. “The world faces a series of unprecedented humanitarian crises and the real threat of famine in four countries,” International Development Secretary Priti Patel said in a statement. UNICEF on Tuesday said that nearly 1.4 million children were at imminent risk of death in famines in South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen. The statement said the new aid would help bring food assistance to more than 500,000 people in South Sudan and up to 1 million in Somalia.
PAKISTAN
Lawyers protest bombing
Lawyers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province yesterday boycotted court hearings in protest, a day after a suicide bombing killed seven people outside a courthouse in the region, officials said. Munib Khan, a member of the regional lawyers’ association, said the protest was an effort to force the government to make courts more secure. A Taliban splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, in which three suicide bombers hit the court in the northwestern town of Tangi. The attack was the latest in a wave of militant assaults that has killed more than 125 since last week, including a shrine bombing claimed by the Islamic State group, which killed 90.
RUSSIA
Court orders activist freed
The Supreme Court yesterday canceled the conviction of prominent anti-Kremlin activist Ildar Dadin and ordered his release from jail, Interfax news agency reported. Dadin, 34, was sentenced to three years in prison — reduced to two-and-a-half on appeal — in December 2015 for a series of peaceful one-man protests against the Kremlin. The motion came after the Constitutional Court on Feb. 10 ordered a review of Dadin’s conviction, arguing that a law that criminalized certain types of protests had to be applied more proportionately.
KAZAKHSTAN
Russia launches spacecraft
A Russian Progress cargo spacecraft yesterday blasted off for the International Space Station from the Baikonur cosmodrome —the first such mission since a failed launch in December last year. The spacecraft, carried by the same Soyuz booster rocket used for manned launches, took off at 11:58am, with the launch broadcast live by NASA TV. It is due to dock with the space station tomorrow. The previous Progress craft, loaded with more than 2.5 tonnes of food and supplies for the space station, broke apart about six minutes after lift-off on Dec. 1.
GERMANY
Culprit leaves manure trail
Police in Bavaria said they were able to track down a man responsible for a hit-and-run by following the hoof prints and manure left behind by the horse pulling his carriage. Police in Grafenrheinfeld said the 78-year-old man scraped a car parked at the side of the road on Tuesday as he trotted through the town near Schweinfurt, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported. The man continued on without reporting the accident, but an eyewitness reported it to police. Police said the trail of hoof prints and manure led them to the suspect’s stable and he confessed to the accident when confronted. The man is responsible for about 2,000 euros (US$2,100) in damage.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
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