UNITED STATES
Man threatens police officer
A New York man is facing hate crime charges after police said he made threats and anti-Asian American remarks — to an undercover officer assigned to a hate crimes task force. Juvian Rodriguez, 35, was arrested on Friday afternoon after the alleged confrontation near Penn Station. According to news accounts, when reporters outside a police station asked Rodriguez for comment, he replied only: “Your mother!” Police said Rodriguez intentionally engaged with the undercover officer, told him to “go back to China” before he ended up in a “graveyard,” and threatened to slap and stab him in the face.
CHINA
Miners trapped by flood
Rescuers were yesterday trying to reach 21 coal miners who were trapped by an underground flood in the country’s northwest, a state news agency reported. The mine in Hutubi County in the Xinjiang region flooded at about 6:10pm on Saturday, the Xinhua News Agency said. It said eight people were rescued.
UNITED STATES
Body found on beach
The body of a Maryland man whose truck plunged off the side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in December last year was found on Friday on a beach in North Carolina, his relatives said. Erik Mezick’s family posted on Facebook that they were notified of the discovery, The Virginian-Pilot reported. The newspaper said Mezick’s brother, Kevin Mezick, confirmed the body was his brother’s. The National Park Service said in a news release that a resident found a man’s body on a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach between the North Carolina villages of Salvo and Avon. The park service said the body would be taken to the North Carolina Medical Examiner’s Office. “We said he would present himself when he was ready and in true [Erik] style he did just that today on his favorite beach,” his family’s Facebook post said.
INDIA
Monkey bandits arrested
Two men who roamed the capital using monkeys to rob unsuspecting victims have been arrested, New Delhi police said on Saturday. The pair were apprehended after one victim complained to officers that three men carrying monkeys had surrounded and robbed him of 6,000 rupees (US$80), a local police official told reporters. “When the victim was sitting in an autorickshaw, the men also entered [the vehicle] and asked one monkey to sit on the front seat and another at the back,” the official said. “They took the money the lawyer had in his wallet and fled with the monkeys.”
SOUTH KOREA
Vaccinations to continue
Authorities yesterday said they would move ahead with a COVID-19 vaccination drive this week, after deciding to continue using AstraZeneca’s vaccine for all eligible people 30 years old or over. The country on Wednesday suspended providing the AstraZeneca shot to people under 60 as Europe reviewed cases of blood clotting in adults. People under 30 would still be excluded from the vaccinations resuming today, because the benefits of the shot do not outweigh the risks for that age group, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said. Three vaccinated people in the country are reported to have developed blood clots, with one case determined to be correlated to the vaccine, Choi Eun-hwa, chair of the Korea Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, told a briefing.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
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