UNITED STATES
Biden mulls Assange case
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said Washington was “considering” a request by Australia to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange on espionage charges. The Australian parliament in February passed a motion with the prime minister’s support calling for an end to the legal saga surrounding Assange, who is currently held in Britain while fighting extradition to the US. “We’re considering it,” Biden replied at the White House when asked by a reporter if he had a response to Australia’s request. Australian citizen Assange, 52, who has been held in a London prison since 2019, has been indicted by the US government over his role in the 2010 leaking of a huge trove of classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
PHILIPIPNES
Navy pilots die after crash
Two navy pilots died yesterday after a helicopter crash near a public market south of the capital, Manila. The Robinson R22 aircraft was on a training flight when it went down in Cavite city at about 6am, the navy said in a statement. Two officer pilots on board were taken to hospital, but died from their injuries, it said. The navy vowed a “thorough investigation” into the cause of the crash. “No stone will be left unturned as we endeavor to prevent this kind of accident from happening again,” navy spokesman Commander John Percie Alcos said. The crashed helicopter was the only Robinson R22 in the navy’s fleet.
UNITED STATES
Eclipse ‘sparks’ killings
An astrology influencer worried about the recent solar eclipse stabbed her partner to death, then pushed her two children out of her moving car before fatally slamming the vehicle into a tree, a report said on Wednesday. Danielle Johnson, who peddled weekly “aura cleanses” on her Web site and offered online zodiac readings, told followers that Monday’s total solar eclipse in North America was “the epitome of spiritual warfare.” Early on Monday morning, she knifed her air force veteran partner dead, before taking off in a Porsche Cayenne with her two daughters, the Los Angeles Times reported. Hurtling down the major 405 freeway before dawn, Johnson shoved the children— one nine years old, the other only eight months — out of the moving vehicle. Only the nine-year-old child survived. Half an hour later police were called to the scene of a horrific crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in which the luxury vehicle had slammed into a tree at 160kph. Johnson’s body had been so disfigured in the crash that identification was difficult, the Times reported. Police who went to the family apartment found a trail of bloody footprints and the body of 29-year-old Jaelen Allen Chaney. He had been stabbed in the heart.
NEW ZEALAND
Lego thieves charged
Police yesterday said they have built a strong case against two Lego-loving shoplifters charged with stealing NZ$20,000 (US$11,973) of the popular toy. The haul of brightly colored interlocking plastic bricks was stolen in recent months from numerous stores across Auckland, police said. The thieves constructed an audacious way of pinching sets of the building blocks.“ In each instance, the alleged thieves brazenly created a diversion in the store by setting off the fire alarm,” sergeant Karen Tabb said in a statement. A 45-year-old woman and a 34-year-old man have been charged with 30 counts of shoplifting. The thieves also face charges under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act for using fire alarms as a distraction, police said.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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