AUSTRALIA
Ex-spouse burns family alive
An ex-rugby league player is suspected of murdering his three children and estranged wife by burning them alive inside their vehicle, in what police have said was one of the most horrific incidents they have encountered. Officers said that 31-year-old Hannah Clarke died in a Brisbane hospital on Wednesday just hours after her three children — aged three, four and six — were found dead in the vehicle on a suburban street. Her husband, Rowan Baxter, who also died, allegedly approached the vehicle and doused it with gasoline before setting it alight, The Australian reported. “How long before we stop this slaughter in our suburbs?” Our Watch chairwoman Natasha Stott Despoja tweeted.
SOUTH KOREA
Cult infection cluster spikes
A cluster of COVID-19 infections centered on a cult church in Daegu yesterday leaped to 39 cases. Almost half of the country’s patients are linked to a 61-year-old woman who is a member of the Daegu branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. She first developed a fever on Monday last week, but reportedly twice refused to be tested on the grounds that she had not traveled abroad, and attended at least four services before being diagnosed. The group claims its founder, Lee Man-hee, has “donned the mantle of Jesus” and will take 144,000 people with him to heaven on the Day of Judgement. Of the 1,001 church members in the city, 90 are showing symptoms, the city said.
NETHERLANDS
City planning ‘erotic center’
Amsterdam is looking at moving part of its red light district indoors to an “erotic” complex, where prostitutes would no longer beckon customers through street-front windows that often attract rowdy tourists. The city said in plans released on Wednesday that the complex could include a bed-and-breakfast for prostitutes, as well as a sex club, sex theater and cafes. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema has vowed to clean up the city’s red light district, as her staff say that throngs of tourists have “disrespected both prostitutes and residents.”
MEXICO
Killers of girl arrested
Police have arrested suspects in the killing of a seven-year-old girl whose murder rocked the capital with protests, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. The body of Fatima Cecilia Aldrighett was discovered over the weekend in a plastic garbage bag, sparking outrage over growing violence against women in the country.
CANADA
Whiteout trips 200-car pileup
Police on Wednesday said that whiteout conditions that came about suddenly most likely triggered a massive pileup involving about 200 vehicles in La Prairie, Quebec. There were no immediate reports of deaths, but the Quebec Provincial Police said that about a dozen people were sent to hospital with minor to serious injuries after the midday crash. The area has heavy winds that come off the river, creating sudden blizzard-like conditions, Quebec Minister of Transport Francois Bonnardel said. “People were driving, there were strong winds ... and, suddenly, you couldn’t see anything — and then, well, the pileup started,” Bonnardel said. About 50 vehicles drove away from the collision, but 75 others would need to be towed, Quebec Provincial Police spokesman Sergeant Stephane Tremblay said, adding that many vehicles were mangled, including several large trucks.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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