UNITED STATES
Manafort request rejected
A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday refused to dismiss criminal charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, after Manafort claimed that Mueller had exceeded his prosecutorial powers. In a sharp rebuke of those claims, Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had followed all the Department of Justice’s rules when he hired Mueller, and Mueller’s case against Manafort is not overly broad or improper.
GUATEMALA
New details in graft probe
Investigators on Tuesday night revealed new details of a probe against President Jimmy Morales relating to purported illicit campaign financing, saying the material is sufficient to again seek to have his immunity from prosecution lifted. Chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana said businesspeople allegedly created a means to deliver anonymous funds to the National Convergence Front when Morales was its secretary-general and legal representative during his presidential run. Aldana alleged that the money, about US$2 million, was channeled through a company called Nova Servicios without being reported to electoral authorities as required by law. The announcement, made public the day before Aldana’s term in office ended, puts her Morales-picked successor, Maria Consuelo Porras, in the position of choosing whether to pursue the case.
UNITED STATES
Nurses want name change
A handful of nurses sick of scandal over Facebook user privacy want a new prescription for a hospital named after the social network’s cofounder, Mark Zuckerberg. The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center said it added his name as a way of saying thanks after Zuckerberg and his physician wife, Priscilla Chan, made a US$75 million donation three years ago. A “very small group” of people demonstrated over the weekend, calling for the Zuckerberg name to be removed, a hospital spokesman said. The protesters said the name could make patients question how well the hospital would protect their privacy.
UNITED STATES
Service refused after insults
A California coffee shop worker refused to serve a customer who insulted a Muslim woman wearing a niqab in a confrontation recorded on video. The footage shows a man asking “Is this Halloween?” while standing in front of the woman. When the woman confronts him, he says he does not like her religion. A supervisor who identifies herself as Tawny Alfaro refuses to sell him coffee while saying he was being disruptive and racist. The Riverside Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf said it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination.
UNITED STATES
Loaded safe found in yard
A couple in New York City found buried treasure in their backyard, the result of having some trees replaced. A safe containing about US$52,000 worth of property — including diamonds, gold, jade and wet cash — was found in the Staten Island yard of Matthew and Maria Colonna Emanuel. The safe also had a piece of paper with an address on it. Matthew Emanuel knocked on a neighbor’s door and asked if they had ever been burglarized. They had, in 2011. The Emanuels returned the safe’s contents to them. Maria Colonna Emanuel said there was never a question about returning the cache: “It wasn’t ours.”
BANGLADESH
Release Zia, court orders
The Supreme Court yesterday ordered the release from detention of 72-year-old opposition leader Khaleda Zia after her lawyers argued she was unwell. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to grant Zia bail while she appeals against a five-year jail term imposed in February for corruption, her lawyer Joynal Abedin said. Zia’s lawyers said they told the court that the three-time former prime minister faced serious health risks if kept in prison. Zia underwent a hospital checkup last month. However, it was not immediately clear when Zia would be released from the special prison in Dhaka where she is the only inmate.
INDIA
Highway collapse kills 18
A highway overpass being built in the northern city of Varanasi collapsed, killing 18 people when an immense concrete slab slammed down onto the crowded road below, officials said yesterday. Five injured people were pulled from the wreckage, police said. Two were seriously hurt. Local media reports said that four officials from the Uttar Pradesh state construction agency were suspended in the wake of the Tuesday collapse. Rescuers and crane operators worked through much of the night to search for survivors and clear the wreckage, which had crushed cars, motorcycles and a bus. However, fears that many more people were trapped were unfounded and the road was reopened yesterday morning.
AUSTRALIA
One last blood donation
James Harrison, known as the “Man with the Golden Arm,” has donated his life-saving blood for the last time. Harrison, 81, has an antibody in his blood that is used to make the lifesaving medication Anti-D, which is given to mothers whose blood is at risk of attacking their unborn babies. The Australian Red Cross Blood Service said Harrison had donated his blood more than 1,100 times over six decades, helping to save more than 2 million babies. “I’ve saved a lot of lives and got a lot of new kids into the world, so yeah, it makes you feel good in that respect,” Harrison told the Nine Network on Friday last week.
CHINA
Plane window under probe
Chinese authorities and Airbus are investigating why a plane’s cockpit window detached during a flight, forcing an emergency landing. Sichuan Airlines Flight 3U8633 was en route from Chongqing, China, to Lhasa, Tibet, on Monday morning when the cockpit window on the A319 jet broke off, according to the Web site of the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The copilot’s seatbelt prevented him from being sucked out of the plane. The plane made an emergency landing in Chengdu, China. The copilot and a flight attendant suffered minor injuries, but none of the 27 passengers was injured, according to a post from Sichuan Airlines on Sina Weibo. Airbus on Tuesday said it has assigned a team to investigate and will cooperate with Chinese authorities.
UNITED STATES
Europa top candidate for life
A new look at old data is giving scientists a fresh reason to view Europa, a moon of Jupiter, as a leading candidate in the search for life beyond Earth, with evidence of water plumes shooting into space. A bend in Europa’s magnetic field observed by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft during a 1997 flyby appears to have been caused by a geyser gushing through its frozen crust from a subsurface ocean, researchers who re-examined the Galileo data reported on Monday.
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
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