UNITED STATES
Plane crash kills 16
A military plane on Monday crashed into a field in rural Mississippi, killing at least 16 people aboard and spreading debris for kilometers. Leflore County Emergency Management Agency Director Frank Randle told reporters at a late briefing that 16 bodies had been recovered after the KC-130 spiraled into the ground about 135km north of Jackson in the Mississippi Delta. The KC-130 is used as a refueling tanker. Andy Jones said he was working on his family’s catfish farm just before 4pm when he heard a boom and looked up to see the plane corkscrewing downward with one engine smoking. By the time he and other reached the crash site, fires were burning too intensely to approach the wreckage, he said.
MEXICO
Journalist’s death probed
The Veracruz state attorney general’s office on Monday said it has opened an investigation into the shooting of a Honduran photojournalist, who had apparently fled his own country fearing for his life. The body of Edwin Rivera Paz was found in the city of Acayucan on Sunday with gunshot wounds, and was identified by a family member, the office said. Rivera Paz was a cameraman for the Honduran television program Los Verduleros (The Grocers). He fled Honduras after assailants shot and killed Igor Padilla, the program’s director and producer, in mid-January.
UNITED STATES
Man charged over mailings
An Olympia, Washington, man who authorities say mailed one of his fingers to the IRS is now facing federal charges. The Seattlepi.com on Monday reported that 68-year-old Normand Lariviere was charged with mailing a threat to injure after IRS workers in Ogden, Utah, discovered a package containing a fake bomb on Thursday last week. Charging papers say he also sent his finger, a bullet and a marijuana joint to tax collectors last year. Court documents say Lariviere has been upset with the IRS since he was laid off in the 1990s from his job as a civilian defense contractor.
BRAZIL
New class for teachers
About 40 teachers in Rio de Janeiro started a new course on Monday — they are learning how to react to the shootings and violence plaguing the city. The course was organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and each teacher will go back and instruct colleagues in their own schools on how to deal with a variety of violent incidents. “It’s a question of knowing how to manage each situation — how to react during a shooting, for example. These are simple courses of action that can make a real difference,” said Lorenzo Caraffi, regional director of the ICRC in Latin America. Since the start of the academic year, only seven of 120 school days have passed without at least one of Rio’s schools being shut down because of outbreaks of violence.
UNITED STATES
Happy cows give more milk
Dairy farmers who want their herds to be cash cows should give them bigger stalls, increase air circulation and provide shelter to prevent overheating, according to a University of Wisconsin initiative that focuses on making dairy cows happier so they provide more milk. “I think it’s really important that we give them the spa treatment,” said Nigel Cook, who has directed the Dairyland Initiative since 2010. Cook said major concerns include leg pain or lameness, especially among cows that stand for long periods without a comfortable resting place.
UNITED KINGDOM
May suspends lawmaker
Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday suspended one of her Conservative Party lawmakers after she used racist language at a think tank event on the implications of Brexit on the financial services sector. Anne Marie Morris, who campaigned to leave the EU in last year’s referendum, was describing her view of what could be done to ensure a good exit agreement in the two years allowed for talks. “And then we get to the real nigger in the wood pile which is, in two years, what will happen if there is no deal,” she told a gathering of politicans, lawyers and senior city figures. She later said she apologised unreservedly for any offense caused. May said she had been shocked to hear about the comment, which she described as “completely unacceptable,” adding that she “immediately asked the Chief Whip to suspend the party whip.” Suspending the party whip means Morris is excluded from the party and will sit as an independent, potentially reducing May’s ability to pass legislation.
TURKEY
More warrants issued
Authorities have issued detention warrants for 105 information technology experts suspected of aiding last year’s failed coup, state-run Anadolu Agency said. The warrants were issued yesterday as the nation starts a week of events commemorating the July 15 anniversary of the thwarted coup and remembering about 250 people who were killed. The report said that 52 of the suspects, who include ex-employees of the nation’s scientific research council and the telecommunications authority, have been detained so far. They are accused of providing technical support to coup plotters.
INDIA
Cattle trade ban suspended
The Supreme Court yesterday suspended a government ban on the trade of cattle for slaughter, a boost for the multibillion-dollar beef and leather industries mostly run by members of the Muslim minority. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in May decreed that markets could only trade cattle for agricultural purposes, such as plowing and dairy production, on the grounds of stopping cruelty to animals. The slaughter of cows, considered holy in Hinduism, was already banned in most parts of the nation, but Hindu hardliners and cow vigilante groups have been increasingly asserting themselves since Modi’s government came to power in 2014. Muslims, who make up 14 percent of the nation’s 1.3 billion people, said the May government decree against the beef and leather industry employing millions of workers was aimed at marginalizing them. The Supreme Court stressed the hardship that the ban on the trade of cattle for slaughter had imposed. “The livelihood of people should not be affected by this,” Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar said in his ruling.
UNITED KINGDOM
Trump to visit next year
US President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain is being planned for next year, a senior government source said yesterday. Prime Minister Theresa May extended the invitation when she visited Washington just days after Trump’s inauguration in January, but a date has yet to be set. The source said both sides had been unable to arrange a date for this year and were now looking for dates next year. There has been speculation Trump was deferring the state visit, an occasion filled with pomp that involves a banquet with Queen Elizabeth II, amid concerns that it would draw protests over his presidency.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
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