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.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
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