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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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