UNITED STATES
Subway worker shot, killed
A man who complained there was too much mayonnaise on his sandwich opened fire at an Atlanta sandwich shop, killing one employee and injuring another, police said. The shooting happened at about 6:30pm on Sunday at a Subway restaurant attached to a gas station in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Police said the man argued with the two female workers before shooting them. “This was a very tragic situation that did not have to occur,” Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton Jr told reporters on Monday. He said a 36-year-old man believed to be the shooter was arrested on Sunday evening. The woman who died was 26 years old. The other woman, 24, remained in critical condition on Monday, Hampton said.
UNITED STATES
Boy shoots, kills baby
An eight-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a one-year-old girl and injured a two-year-old girl at a Florida motel on Sunday, authorities said. The boy’s father left the gun holstered in his Pensacola motel room closet. His son found it and fired a round that passed through and killed the baby and struck the toddler, Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said at a news conference on Monday. The children who were shot belonged to the girlfriend of the father. The boy’s father returned, took the gun and what investigators believe were drugs and left again, Simmons said. He was arrested and later released on US$41,000 bail.
NETHERLANDS
Tornado kills female tourist
A tornado on Monday ripped through a southwestern city, killing a woman and injuring nine others in the first fatal twister to hit the nation for three decades. The whirlwind left a trail of destruction through the seaside city of Zierikzee, ripping the roofs off homes and toppling trees onto vehicles, a journalist at the scene said. Images on social media showed debris rotating in the air in the fierce winds and a huge funnel descending from stormy clouds as the tornado hit the city in Zeeland Province. The victim was a 73-year-old woman from Wassenaar, a town near The Hague, police said. Local media said she was a tourist who was hit on the head by a roof tile in the harbor area.
GREECE
War crimes suspect detained
Police have detained a 59-year-old Serbian man wanted in Croatia for alleged war crimes committed in 1991, during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Authorities said the man, who has not been named, was detained on Monday after crossing the border from North Macedonia, en route to a holiday resort with his wife and daughter. The man, who says he was a conscript in the Yugoslav army, but has denied any wrongdoing, is accused of participating in actions that led to the death of civilians between Aug. 19 and Dec. 14, 1991, in the Croatian towns of Vocin and Hum.
GERMANY
Court to hand down verdict
A court was to give its verdict yesterday in the trial of a 101-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, the oldest person so far to be charged with complicity in war crimes during the Holocaust. Josef Schuetz is accused of involvement in the murders of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945. The pensioner, who now lives in Brandenburg state, has pleaded not guilty, saying he did “absolutely nothing” and was not aware of the gruesome crimes being carried out at the camp. “I don’t know why I am here,” he said at the close of his trial on Monday.
NEW ZEALAND
Migrants needed for kiwifruit
The country’s kiwifruit harvest has fallen short of expectations after poor weather affected yields and growers struggled to find the migrant labor normally used to pick the vines. A lower harvest adds to pressure on returns for 2,800 kiwifruit growers, who have faced rising costs from fuel, shipping and wages, as well as a shortage of labor. The industry relies on about 24,000 seasonal workers, augmented by 6,500 young foreigners typically on working holidays. That supply was disrupted by border closures and the wave of infections caused by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 that hit the community just as the picking season began in March.
CHINA
Quarantine cut in half
The National Health Commission cut the mandatory quarantine period to 10 days from three weeks for inbound visitors in its latest COVID-19 guidance. New arrivals and close contacts of infected patients must spend seven days in centralized quarantine and then closely monitor their health for another three days at home, the government protocol released yesterday said. Health authorities previously required up to 21 days of hotel quarantine.
MYANMAR
Show ‘compassion’: envoy
Cambodian Minister of Foreign Affairs Prak Sokhonn, the current ASEAN special envoy tasked with facilitating talks between the country’s military government and its opponents, on Monday called for deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi to be returned to house arrest from solitary confinement, ahead of his second visit to the country today. The former leader was last week transferred from house arrested to solitary confinement in prison. Prak Sokhonn urged the military leaders to “exercise compassion and facilitate the return of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to the home where she was originally detained, in consideration of her fragile health and well-being.”
PHILIPPINES
Bid to thwart Marcos denied
The Supreme Court yesterday rejected a final bid to disqualify president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr from last month’s election, media reported, clearing the way for him to be sworn in tomorrow for a six-year term. Rights advocates had appealed to the top court to overturn the election commission’s dismissal of their petitions, which sought his disqualification before the ballot on the grounds of decades-old tax violations, which they argued made him ineligible to run. The Supreme Court justices unanimously dismissed the consolidated cases, media reported.
IVORY COAST
Plan to help targeted youth
The government on Monday said it is launching a three-year campaign to support young people in border regions at risk of being recruited by Sahel militants. “As part of the fight against vulnerability in northern areas, particularly the six regions bordering Burkina Faso and Mali, the government has launched an ambitious program of integration and infrastructure for education and health,” Minister of Youth Promotion Mamadou Toure said, adding that the program would cost 405 million euros (US$428.61 million). The new plan would provide 60,000 young people with professional training, apprenticeships and start-up financing. “Along with the military response, we want ... to develop an ambitious social program to ... give young people prospects to prevent them from becoming easy targets for jihadist movements,” Toure said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number