COSTA RICA
Twelve killed in plane crash
A plane carrying 10 US citizens and two local crew members on Sunday crashed in a wooded area, killing all aboard, the government said. The Public Safety Ministry posted photographs and video of the crash site showing burning wreckage of the plane in Guanacaste. Authorities said that so far they had only a list of passengers provided by the airline and were awaiting official confirmation of their identities. A family in the suburbs of New York City said five of the dead Americans were relatives on vacation. They identified them as Bruce and Irene Steinberg and their sons Matthew, William and Zachary, all of Scarsdale. “We are in utter shock and disbelief right now,” Bruce Steinberg’s sister, Tamara Steinberg Jacobson, wrote on Facebook. She also confirmed the deaths in an interview with NBC News.
UNITED KINGDOM
Cars destroyed in fire
A blaze has destroyed every vehicle left in a 1,600-capacity car park serving Liverpool’s indoor arena, police said yesterday. The Liverpool International Horse Show, taking place in the city’s neighboring 11,000-seater arena, was canceled due to the fire, which broke out after dark on Sunday. Nobody has been seriously injured in the blaze, the Merseyside Police said, while all horses were accounted for. “Initial investigations indicate that an accidental fire within a vehicle caused other cars to ignite,” the force said. “We believe that all vehicles parked in the car park have been destroyed and advise owners to contact their insurance companies.”
MEXICO
Car crash kills 10
Several US citizens were among 10 people who died in a car crash and subsequent fire on the southwestern coast near tourist hot spot Acapulco, the US Department of State said on Sunday. Two other were injured in the accident late on Friday, when two cars and a motorcycle collided on the highway between Acapulco and beach city Zihuatanejo in Guerrero State, Mexico’s civil protection agency said. A one-year-old and four-year-old were killed in the accident, along with others ranging aged between 26 and 76, Guerrero’s civil protection agency said.
UNITED STATES
Seattle settles abuse suit
The City of Seattle has settled a lawsuit filed by a man who claimed former mayor Ed Murray sexually abused him when he was a teenager. City Attorney Pete Holmes late on Saturday announced that the city will pay Delvonn Heckard US$150,000 to settle the lawsuit, which led to Murray’s resignation. The lawsuit claimed Murray raped and molested Heckard as a teen and blamed the city for enabling Murray to use his political office to slander Heckard and others for months.
VATICAN CITY
Pope laments war, lies
Pope Francis in his year-end message said that last year had been marred by war, lies and injustice, and urged people to take responsibility for their actions. At his last public event of the year, an evening vespers service in St Peter’s Basilica, the pontiff said that humanity had “wasted and wounded” the year “in many ways with works of death, with lies and injustices.” While war was the most obvious sign of “unrepentant and absurd pride,” many other transgressions had caused “human, social and environmental degradation,” he said. “We must take responsibility for everything before God, our brothers and our creation,” Francis said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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