UNITED STATES
Ex-marine ‘out of danger’
The US Department of State on Tuesday said it was closely monitoring the health of a former US marine jailed in Venezuela after his family said he had been hospitalized following a suicide attempt. Matthew Heath is receiving medical treatment, multiple sources said, with a family spokesperson confirming on Tuesday night that “he is still very much in the fight of his life.” Heath, who was arrested in September 2020 for alleged “terrorism,” has been accused by President Nicolas Maduro of spying, and plotting attacks on oil and electrical installations.
“We are monitoring Matthew’s health and welfare as closely as possible, and we are in regular contact with Matthew’s family,” a state department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said in an e-mail.
Heath’s lawyer, Guillermo Heredia, said the former marine was “already out of danger.”
UNITED STATES
Yellowstone to reopen
Visitors returning to Yellowstone National Park yesterday, as it partially reopened following record floods, saw reshaped rivers and canyons, numerous wiped-out roads and some areas famous for their views of wildlife left inaccessible. Park managers raised the gates at 8am at three of Yellowstone’s five entrances for the first time since Monday last week, when 10,000 visitors were ordered out after rivers across northern Wyoming and southern Montana surged over their banks following a torrent of rainfall that accelerated the spring snowmelt. Some of the premier attractions at the US’ first national park are to again be viewable, including Old Faithful — the legendary geyser that shoots towering bursts of steaming water almost like clockwork more than a dozen times a day. However, the bears, wolves and bison that roam Lamar Valley and the thermal features around Mammoth Hot Springs are to remain out of reach. The wildlife-rich northern half of the park is to be closed until at least early next month, and key routes into the park remain severed near the Montana tourist towns of Gardiner, Red Lodge and Cooke City.
UNITED STATES
Jury finds Cosby guilty
Jurors at a civil trial on Tuesday found that Bill Cosby sexually abused a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy Mansion in 1975. The Los Angeles County jury delivered the verdict in favor of Judy Huth, who is now 64, and awarded her US$500,000. She said the fact that jurors believed her story meant more than the sum of money or the fact that she did not win punitive damages. “It’s been torture,” Huth said of the seven-year legal fight. “To be ripped apart, you know, thrown under the bus and backed over. This, to me, is such a big victory,” she said. Jurors found that Cosby intentionally caused harmful sexual contact with Huth, that he reasonably believed she was under the age of 18, and that his conduct was driven by unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in a minor. Cosby did not attend the trial or testify in person, but short clips from 2015 video deposition were played for jurors, in which he denied any sexual contact with Huth. Jurors had reached conclusions on nearly every question on their verdict form, including whether Cosby abused Huth and whether she deserved damages, after two days of deliberations on Friday. However, the jury foreperson could not serve further because of a personal commitment, and the panel had to start deliberating from scratch with an alternate juror on Monday.
INDONESIA
Japanese deported to Tokyo
A Japanese man was early yesterday deported to Tokyo, where police have accused him, his family and acquaintances of participating in a fraud scheme that netted US$7.3 million intended for small businesses hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. Mitsuhiro Taniguchi, 47, was presented to journalists at the Directorate-General of Immigration office in Jakarta before he was sent on a morning flight to Tokyo. “He was deported from Indonesia since his passport has been revoked by the Japanese government and he had no residence permit. He will be banned from entering Indonesia in the future,” immigration official Douglas Simamora said. Taniguchi was on June 4 arrested at a house owned by a fish trader in Lampung Province. Taniguchi and a group of acquaintances allegedly submitted about 1,700 fraudulent applications for COVID-19 relief funds. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department believes they received subsidies on more than 960 of those applications, totaling ￥960 million (US$7.05 million).
SOUTH KOREA
Two monkeypox cases posted
The country yesterday reported its first two suspected cases of monkeypox, saying that tests were being conducted and health authorities would hold a briefing once they are completed. One of the cases, a foreigner who has reportedly been showing symptoms since Sunday, entered the country on Monday and is being treated in a hospital in Busan. The other, a Korean who showed symptoms when entering the country from Germany on Tuesday afternoon, has been admitted to Incheon Medical Center for treatment. “The health authority will swiftly hold a briefing to announce measures and response plans once the results are out,” the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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