UNITED STATES
Rocket motors arrive in LA
Two giant rocket motors required to display the retired NASA space shuttle Endeavour as if it is about to blast off arrived at a Los Angeles museum on Wednesday, completing their long journey from the Mojave Desert. The 35.3m motors, which are giant white cylinders, were trucked for two days from the Mojave Air and Space Port to Exposition Park, where the California Science Center’s Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center is being built to display the Endeavour. Donated by Northrop Grumman, the motors are the largest components of the two solid rocket boosters that would be attached to a space shuttle’s external tank to help the main engines lift the orbiter off the launch pad. Schoolchildren were among several hundred people who watched the move — the latest spectacle in the yearslong process of preparing to put Endeavour on permanent display vertically as if it was about to blast off.
UNITED STATES
Officer loses finger to bite
A New York City police officer lost his left ring finger up to the first knuckle when a reckless driving suspect bit him, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Lenni Rodriguez Cruz, 28, faces 25 years in prison for leading police on a car chase, crashing into several vehicles and biting a sergeant who was trying to put him in a holding cell, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. On Sept. 20, an officer patrolling in the Jamaica section of Queens spotted Rodriguez Cruz driving a car with license plates that were not registered to the vehicle, Katz said in a news release. The officer tried to pull Rodriguez Cruz over, but he sped off, mounted a sidewalk and drove through a park, scattering parkgoers as they ran to safety, Katz said. Rodriguez Cruz kept driving and hit four vehicles, including an unmarked police car that was part of a barricade set up to stop him, Katz said. When officers pulled Rodriguez Cruz out of his crashed car, his breath smelled of alcohol, his speech was slurred and there was a cup containing an alcoholic beverage inside the car, Katz said. Officers took Rodriguez Cruz to the local police station, where he spit on the sergeant and bit the sergeant’s finger tip off, Katz said.
UNITED STATES
Man gives back cash
A Connecticut man who found a bag containing nearly US$5,000 in cash outside a bank had a criminal charge against him dropped on Wednesday after he gave the money back. Robert Withington, 57, went to Bridgeport Superior Court for a court hearing, but a state prosecutor informed Withington’s lawyer the charge was being dropped. Withington found the bag with US$4,761 on May 30 outside a bank in his hometown of Trumbull. It belonged to the Trumbull tax collector’s office, and a town employee had dropped the bag while walking to the bank to deposit the money, police said. A police officer had escorted the town employee to the bank, but neither noticed the bag being dropped, police said. Withington, a dog trainer, picked up the bag and drove off, police said. He was identified through surveillance video and arrested on Aug. 25. Before Wednesday’s court appearance, Withington had given the town a check in the amount of the missing money. Withington said that he did not do anything wrong. “They dropped the money. Someone from the town should be fired for being so irresponsible, but I did nothing wrong,” Withington said in a telephone interview. “I just found a money bag. It was just a big joke. They wasted my time. They slandered my name. It was very upsetting.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
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