INDIA
Tunnel rescuers change tack
Rescuers are considering opening a vertical shaft to free 41 men trapped in a collapsed tunnel after drilling at the site was paused over fears of further cave-ins and as efforts stretched into a second week. Excavators have been removing earth, concrete and rubble from the under-construction tunnel in the northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand since Nov. 12 after a portion of the tunnel the workers were in collapsed. Bhaskar Khulbe, a senior government official involved in the rescue operations, said that teams were considering digging an entirely new shaft, including from above. “We are exploring all options to save the workers,” Khulbe said late on Saturday. He said rescuers were looking at a time frame of “a maximum of four to five days” to free the men, without giving further details.
IRAN
Jailed rapper freed on bail
Authorities have released on bail a popular rapper jailed for more than a year over supporting nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in custody, local media have reported. Toomaj Salehi, 32, was arrested in October last year after backing the wave of demonstrations that erupted a month earlier, triggered by the death of 22-year-old Amini, who had been taken into custody over an alleged breach of strict dress rules for women. In July, Salehi was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “corruption on Earth” — one of the country’s most serious offenses, which carries a maximum penalty of death. The musician’s lawyer, Amir Raisian, told daily Shargh late on Saturday that upon appeal, the Supreme Court had found “flaws in the initial sentence” and ordered that Salehi be “released from prison today on bail.”
UNITED STATES
Century-overdue book found
A library book that is more than a century overdue was finally returned in St Paul, Minnesota. The tome, Famous Composers, turned up while someone was sorting through a relative’s belongings. The St Paul Public Library checkout slip shows it was last borrowed in 1919, Minnesota Public Radio reported. St Paul Mayor Melvin Carter joked in a tweet on Saturday that there would be no fine. The library, like many across the country, stopped charging late fees in 2019. St Paul Public Library digital library coordinator John Larson said he doubted the book would go back into circulation because of its delicate condition, but expected the library to hang onto it. “It has reached a point where it’s not just an old book, it’s an artifact. It has a little bit of history to it,” he said. Larson said in his 25 years working for the library it was the oldest book he ever saw returned.
BRAZIL
Swift delays show after death
American superstar Taylor Swift on Saturday postponed a show in Rio de Janeiro due to extreme heat, after a fan died at the singer’s concert the previous night. The postponement came after the heat index in the city had risen to as high as 59°C on Friday, when a 23-year-old fan in the crowd of 60,000 died during the first “Eras Tour” show in the country. “The safety and well-being of my fans, fellow performers and crew has to and always will come first,” she wrote on Instagram in announcing the postponement. The concert was moved to today. “It’s with a shattered heart that I say we lost a fan earlier tonight,” Swift said in a post on Instagram to her millions of followers earlier Saturday. “I can’t even tell you how devastated I am by this.”
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
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