UNITED STATES
Four die in helicopter crash
The navy on Tuesday said that four people died in the crash of a contractor’s helicopter on the Hawaii island of Kauai. The Pacific Missile Range Facility said the aircraft crashed on the north side of the installation shortly after 10am. There were no survivors. The names of those killed were not yet available, it said. The helicopter was being flown by Croman Corp in support of a training operation, the missile range facility said in a news release. The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter that the agency is investigating the crash of the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter. The Sikorsky S-61N was built between 1959 and 1980 by Sikorsky Aircraft, which is now part of Lockheed Martin. It was designed to carry a substantial freight or passenger payload.
ECUADOR
Prisoners to be pardoned
President Guillermo Lasso on Tuesday announced that about 5,000 prisoners would be pardoned to reduce overcrowding in the country’s prisons, which were hit with riots that left more than 320 inmates dead last year. “I hope that at least 5,000 people deprived of their freedom will be released,” the president told reporters. He said he aimed “to end overcrowding by the end of the year and thus have a much more favorable environment for security and for social rehabilitation inside the prisons.” The country’s 65 prisons have capacity for 30,000 inmates, but house about 39,000, equivalent to 30 percent overcrowding.
UGANDA
Author arrives in Germany
An award-winning Ugandan author who fled the country after being charged with insulting President Yoweri Museveni and his son has arrived in Germany to seek medical treatment after being “tortured” in jail, his lawyer said yesterday. “He arrived in Germany this morning,” Eron Kiiza, the lawyer for Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, told reporters, describing the news as “a big relief.” The novelist was detained shortly after Christmas and later charged with “offensive communication.”
TONGA
Web connection restored
The country’s main Internet connection to the rest of the world has finally been restored more than five weeks after a huge volcanic eruption and tsunami severed a crucial undersea cable. Three people were killed by the Jan. 15 tsunami, dozens of homes were destroyed and drinking water was tainted. The fiber-optic cable is now fully operational again after being reconnected on Tuesday, said Samiuela Fonua, chairperson of Tonga Cable Ltd, the state-owned company that owns the cable. “It’s a huge relief when you know things have come to the end and are working well,” Fonua said.
UNITED STATES
Oscar awards slimmed down
To combat slumping ratings, the Academy Awards are undergoing a radical slimming down, with eight awards to be presented off-air during next month’s telecast. In a letter sent on Tuesday to members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the group’s president, David Rubin, said that the awards for film editing, production design, sound, makeup and hairstyling, music (original score) and the three short film awards for documentary, live-action and animated short would be presented at the ceremony before the live broadcast begins on ABC. Instead of starting the ceremony and broadcast all at once, the Dolby Theatre ceremony is to begin an hour before the telecast does.
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
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS