UNITED STATES
Trump orders voting probe
The White House says US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order creating a commission to look at the public’s confidence in the integrity of the voting system. The long-awaited panel follows Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations that millions of people voted illegally in last year’s election. The commission is to look at allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states across the nation. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said US Vice President Mike Pence will chair the panel, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will co-chair it. She says the group plans to complete its work with a report to Trump by next year.
UNITED STATES
Man indicted in stock plot
A grand jury has charged a Florida man with plotting to set off explosions in Target stores so that he could gain financially from a plunge in the company’s stock price. An indictment filed on Wednesday in federal court in Ocala charges 49-year-old Mark Barnett with five counts of attempted arson, possession of a destructive device and unlawful possession of a weapon. A criminal complaint says the convicted felon offered a friend US$10,000 to place packages of food filled with explosives at Target stores along the east coast in February. The friend instead went to authorities, who say Barnett hoped to buy Target stock after the price plunged. In another bomb plot linked to financial gain, German prosecutors say a 28-year-old man schemed to net millions by betting against a soccer team and then bombing the team’s bus. The officials said last month that the man, identified only as Sergej W in line with German privacy laws, took out a five-figure loan to bet that Borussia Dortmund shares would drop, then bombed the team’s bus on April 11 when it left a hotel in an attack he tried to disguise as Islamic terrorism.
UNITED STATES
Mannequin ‘killer’ charged
A man who police suspect killed two homeless men in Las Vegas pleaded not guilty on Thursday to attempted murder in an unusual case charging him with trying to kill a mannequin that police posed as a decoy near the scene of the earlier killings. Shane Allen Schindler, 30, has not been charged in the Jan. 4 bludgeoning death of Daniel Aldape or the Feb. 3 killing of David Dunn, who police say were apparently sleeping when they were attacked. Schindler was arrested Feb. 22 after police said he was seen on surveillance video creeping up on the mannequin in a vacant downtown lot, pulling a hood over his head and using a two-handed grip to pummel the head of the decoy with a 1.8kg hammer. Schindler told police following his arrest that he knew it was a mannequin he was attacking, but prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo has said Schindler could not have known he was not attacking a human. Schindler’s court-appointed attorney, Ashley Sisolak, has withdrawn a challenge of his mental competency. She declined to comment about the case outside court. Schindler, who moved to Las Vegas from Bay City, Michigan, entered the plea in Nevada state court to attempted murder and carrying a concealed weapon. A grand jury indicted him last week. A judge set trial for Aug. 8. Clark County public defender Phil Kohn has derided the charge of attempted murder as a legal impossibility, saying someone cannot kill an inanimate object, but Nevada appellate law appears to support the charge. The state Supreme Court in 1976 and 1989 pointed to intent when it rejected arguments of legal impossibility in attempted crimes.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
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
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
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
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