NICARAGUA
Opposition leader jailed
Opposition leader Yubrank Suazo, who took part in protests against President Daniel Ortega’s government in 2018, was on Wednesday sentenced to 10 years in prison. A court in Managua sentenced Suazo to five years in jail for “conspiring to undermine national integrity” and another five years for spreading fake news, said the Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, where Suazo served as a director. Suazo was “prosecuted and sentenced without having committed any crime, nor having any link with criminal structures,” it said in a statement. The 31-year-old hails from the southern city of Masaya, which was shaken by large protests against the government in 2018.
UNITED STATES
Cops in Floyd case get jail
A federal court on Wednesday sentenced the last two former Minneapolis police officers who were convicted of violating George Floyd’s civil rights during his May 2020 killing. J. Alexander Kueng was sentenced to three years and Tou Thao received a three-and-a-half-year sentence, penalties that a judge said reflected their level of culpability in the case that sparked worldwide protests as part of a reckoning over racial injustice. They were convicted in February of two counts of violating Floyd’s civil rights. The jury found they deprived Floyd of medical care and failed to stop Derek Chauvin as he knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes.
INDIA
Toxic alcohol kills 42
At least 42 people have died and nearly 100 others have been hospitalized after drinking toxic alcohol, police said yesterday, with authorities ordering a crackdown on bootleggers. Dozens of people became ill earlier this week after drinking methanol sold in several villages across Gujarat state. Senior police official Ashok Yadav said that 31 people had since died in Botad District. Another 11 people died in nearby Ahmedabad district, said V. Chandrasekar, another senior police official. Gujarat Home Affairs Minister Harsh Sanghavi said in statement that 97 people had been admitted to hospital for treatment, with two in critical condition.
CHINA
Cop on the run after killings
A local public security bureau in Sichuan Province is offering a 100,000 yuan (US$14,818) bounty for a suspect in a gun attack that killed three people and injured two others. The shooting occurred on Tuesday afternoon in Muchuan County, the bureau said in a statement. The suspect, identified as Li Qiang, “injured two with guns and killed three with weapons,” police said without offering details. “Guns and ammunition involved in the case were seized” they said, offering a reward for anyone who “provides effective clues or captures the criminal suspects.” The suspect was a police officer decorated for bravery last year after saving an elderly man and a woman from drowning in two separate instances, an article published by the bureau said.
INDIA
Lightning kills nearly 50
Seven people, mostly farmers, were killed by lightning in a village in Uttar Pradesh state, police said yesterday, bringing the death toll by lightning to 49 people in the state this week. The farmers had taken shelter under trees during a drenching monsoon rain when they were struck by lightning on Tuesday and died instantly. The victims included four members of a family and some cattle grazers near the city of Kaushambi, police officer Kaushambi Hem Raj Meena said.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
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
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
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