UNITED STATES
Police to scrap race codes
A suburban New York police department said that it is scrapping codes in an internal spreadsheet that denoted Asian personnel with the letter “Y,” apparently for “yellow.” The Nassau County Police Department said it is immediately changing those notations and the designation the department had used for Native Americans: “I,” for Indian. The New York Civil Liberties Union unearthed the notations through public records requests for policies and data from various police departments statewide. The personnel spreadsheet system was more than 25 years old and “in no way has the use of these letters reflected any bias toward our Asian-American or Native American residents,” Nassau County Detective Lieutenant Richard LeBrun said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Ex-translator gets citizenship
An Iraqi former translator for the military is finally becoming a US citizen one year after officials abruptly removed him from a naturalization ceremony, prompting him to sue the government. Haeder al-Anbki was yesterday to participate in a naturalization ceremony in Orlando, Florida, along with 93 others. The Iraqi native was at a naturalization ceremony for 20 immigrant recruits in Fort Benning, Georgia, in June last year when he was stopped and told he would not be participating. Al-Anbki claimed in his lawsuit that authorities were applying a different set of rules under a program that opponents have said targets applicants from Muslim-majority countries.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bomber rescued from Libya
A man who killed 22 people in an attack in Manchester, England, at the end of a show by US singer Ariana Grande was rescued from the civil war in Libya three years before by the Royal Navy, the Daily Mail reported. Salman Abedi, born to Libyan parents, was thought to be on vacation in Libya in August 2014 when fighting broke out and officials offered to evacuate British citizens, the newspaper said. Abedi was among about 100 British citizens plucked from the coast of Libya and taken to Malta for a flight to Britain, it said. “For this man to have committed such an atrocity on UK soil after we rescued him from Libya was an act of utter betrayal,” the newspaper quoted a government source as saying.
UNITED STATES
Man ordered to clean dung
A judge known for unique sentences has ordered a man who knocked over a chemical toilet to clean manure out of animal pens at a county fairgrounds in Ohio. Judge Michael Cicconetti suspended most of a 120-day jail sentence for 18-year-old Bayley Toth, who pleaded guilty and was convicted of criminal mischief, in favor of the creative punishment of cleaning up animal waste. He compared Toth’s actions to those of an animal, saying: “You act like an animal, you’re going to take care of animals.”
UNITED STATES
Shark returned unharmed
A shark that was snatched from a petting tank at the San Antonio Zoo’s Richard Friedrich Aquarium is back home alive, with investigators saying that a person confessed to the deed. Investigators in Leon Valley, Texas, a suburb of San Antonio, said the person in custody was charged on Monday night and that two other people are expected to be charged. Surveillance video shows two men and a woman on Saturday afternoon sneaking the nearly 1m-long gray horn shark from the aquarium in a stroller and placing it in a pickup truck for the getaway.
PHILIPPINES
Bomb in van kills 11
A bomb exploded in a van and killed 11 people at a military checkpoint in the south yesterday, in an attack that officials blamed on militants with ties to the Islamic State group. A suspected bomber, a soldier, five paramilitaries and four civilians, including a mother and her child, were killed and seven people were wounded, an army spokesman said. The blast occurred on the island of Basilan moments after troops stopped the vehicle and spoke to the driver, who was alone in the van and likely detonated the bomb, the military said. Basilan is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group, which is notorious for kidnapping and banditry, and was the home of the former “emir” of the Islamic State in Southeast Asia, who Philippine troops killed last year after a hunt of more than 15 years.
AUSTRALIA
Bomb plotter gets 17 years
An extremist who planned a suicide attack with Molotov cocktails after he was prevented from flying to Syria to fight was yesterday sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison, with a non-parole period of 13 years. Agim Kruezi, 25, had pleaded guilty in the Queensland state Supreme Court to preparing for an incursion into a foreign state and preparing for a terrorist act. It is illegal under Australian law for an Australian citizen to fight in a foreign country except for a state military force. Justice Rosalyn Atkinson found he had not rejected the violent, extremist views that led him to buying materials to create Molotov cocktails to unleash an attack. “You remain a serious risk to the public,” Atkinson said.
AUSTRALIA
Man admits suitcase murder
A man yesterday pleaded guilty to killing a young mother and her toddler, whose skeleton was found in a suitcase on the side of a road. Daniel James Holdom, 43, admitted the double murder in 2008 of Karlie Jade Pearce-Stevenson, 20, and her two-year-old daughter, Khandalyce Kiara Pearce, when he appeared in the New South Wales state Supreme Court. Pearce-Stevenson’s bones were discovered in 2010 in Belanglo State Forest in New South Wales, the site where seven backpackers’ bodies were dumped during a serial killer spree in the 1990s. Police were unable to identify her until 2015, when her child’s remains were found by a passerby in a suitcase near a highway close to a small South Australia town about 1,100km away. The discovery prompted two calls to a police hotline that eventually helped investigators identify the pair through DNA. Holdom had a short relationship with Pearce-Stevenson.
AUSTRALIA
Kangaroo shocks family
A kangaroo shocked a sleeping family by smashing through a bedroom window and bleeding throughout their home. Melbourne resident Mafi Ahokavo was jolted awake last weekend by a loud noise and discovered the intruder in the house he shares with his partner and three-year-old-son. “We were just sleeping and out of nowhere we just hear a big bang,” he told Channel Nine TV late on Monday. The frightened roo, which cut itself on the shattered glass, bounced through the house before collapsing from exhaustion in the bathroom. Ahokavo was able to lock it in before rescuers arrived. Vets treated the wounded marsupial for multiple lacerations, but the roo yesterday bounced out of the enclosure on Melbourne’s outskirts where he was being nursed back to health. The Five Freedoms Animal Rescue said the missing roo may be suffering from a life-threatening case of myopathy.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
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