UNITED KINGDOM
Assange warrant upheld
A judge in London on Tuesday upheld an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange, but delayed until next week her decision on a further application by his lawyers to cancel it. Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012 to dodge a European arrest warrant and extradition to Sweden over a 2010 probe there into rape and sexual assault allegations against him. Sweden dropped its investigation last year. However, local police are still seeking to arrest Assange for failing to surrender to a court after violating his bail terms during his unsuccessful battle against extradition. “I’m not persuaded that the warrant should be withdrawn,” Judge Emma Arbuthnot said, adding that Assange had breached his bail conditions in 2012. However, she said she would rule separately on another application from Assange’s lawyers asking her to consider whether it would be in the “public interest” to keep the warrant in place.
UNITED KINGDOM
Suffragette pardons mulled
The government will consider pardons for suffragettes convicted during the struggle for women’s right to vote, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said on Tuesday, a century to the day since some women won the right to go to the polls. Rudd said she would “take a look at” the cases of women who were prosecuted during the pro-suffrage campaign more than 100 years ago. Speaking on the BBC, Rudd said that “it is complicated, because if you’re going to give a legal pardon for things like arson and violence, it’s not as straightforward as people think it might be.” Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said that if elected, he would pardon the suffragettes “and give an official apology for the miscarriages of justice and wider persecution they suffered.”
ARGENTINA
Lesbians kiss in protest
Lesbian couples on Tuesday puckered up for a collective kiss in front of a Buenos Aires courthouse to protest the prosecution of a woman in a case activists say is homophobic. Mariana Gomez was arrested in October last year and charged with contempt of law enforcement. She said police apprehended her for smoking in an unauthorized area as a cover to accost her and her spouse for kissing in public. Her wife, Rocio Girat, said the pair were saying goodbye before work when police approached. “Yes, we were embracing,” she told reporters. “It’s the first time they have arrested a person for smoking, which is in any case an infraction punishable by fine.” She said her partner was cuffed for three hours and even though she told police they were married, Gomez’s status was listed as single.
UNITED STATES
Woman finds lizard in salad
A Maine woman who prepared a salad said she realized after a couple of bites that her fork was stuck in a 7.5cm lizard, minus the tail. After vomiting and getting over her shock, Michelle Carr, a nurse from Kittery, said she feared she could have ingested harmful bacteria. A biologist friend believes she found a blue-bellied lizard from California. Carr said she bought a bag of store-brand romaine lettuce at a supermarket in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Jan. 26. The lettuce was distributed by a California company. A supermarket spokeswoman said it notified the supplier. Carr also called the state Health Department. A spokesman said because the lettuce was packaged and shipped from another state, any investigation would be conducted by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
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
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
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