UNITED STATES
Man charged over extortion
Federal prosecutors on Friday charged Devonere Johnson, whose arrest triggered a violent protest in Madison, Wisconsin. Johnson was charged with extorting local businesses after being arrested on Tuesday after he walked into Cooper’s Tavern near the state Capitol building with a megaphone and a bat. The arrest sparked a protest that night during which people tore down two statues and allegedly assaulted Wisconsin Senator Tim Carpenter. Johnson faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted on two counts of extortion. According to court documents, Johnson and an unnamed man had been trying to extort business owners for beer, food and money for two days before Johnson was arrested. FBI Agent Beth Boxwell wrote in an affidavit that the owner of Cooper’s Tavern came up from the bar’s basement on Monday to find Johnson and another man unidentified in the affidavit sitting at a table. The owner told him that he supports the Black Lives Matter movement, to which Johnson replied, according to court documents: “What have you done locally?” He said he would start breaking windows if he did not get money. The owner told police he was afraid that protesters would target his business because he did not give Johnson what he wanted. Johnson allegedly returned twice to the tavern on Tuesday, at one point joined by two other men. He shouted allegations of racism through a megaphone and swung a bat, according to the affidavit. “Just give us some free food and beer and we can end this now,” Johnson said, according to the affidavit. “You don’t want 600 people to come here and destroy your business and burn it down. The cops are on our side. You notice that when you call them, nothing happens to us.”
UNITED STATES
Chinese spy convicted
A federal judge on Friday convicted a Chinese national of economic espionage, stealing trade secrets and engaging in a conspiracy for the benefit of his country’s government. District Judge Edward Davila found Zhang Hao (張浩), 41, guilty of the three counts after a four-day trial. The decision comes five years after Zhang was indicted on charges of conspiring to steal technology from two companies shortly after graduating from the University of Southern California. The trade secrets were heisted from Zhang’s former employer, Skyworks Solutions in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Avago Technologies, a San Jose, California, company later acquired by chipmaker Broadcom. The verdict “is an important step in holding accountable an individual who robbed his US employer of trade secrets and sought to replicate the company’s technology and replace its market share,” Department of Justice assistant attorney general for national security John Demers said.
BANGLADESH
Police kill four Rohingya
Four suspected members of a Rohingya group allegedly involved in kidnapping for ransom were killed in a gunfight with police near refugee camps where refugees from Myanmar live, officials said. The gunfight took place on Friday when a team of security officials was searching for the gang leader in a forest near the Rohingya camps at Cox’s Bazar, Police Inspector Pradeep Kumar Das said. Another inspector, Morzina Akhter, said that the suspects opened fire at police, sparking the gunfight that led to their deaths. According to authorities and local media reports, the gang led by Abdul Hakim has kidnapped many locals for ransom and killed those whose families failed to pay.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
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