MALAYSIA
Airport shooting not terrorism
A man attempting to shoot his wife at Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday instead left her personal bodyguard in a critical condition, Malaysian authorities said. Police were investigating the rare shooting in connection to a domestic dispute and said it was not related to terrorism. The shooter, who was thought to be targeting his wife in the arrivals hall, hit her bodyguard and then fled the scene, police said. “The suspect fired two shots before hitting a local man who was a bodyguard, causing the victim to suffer injuries to the abdomen,” Selangor state police chief Hussein Omar Khan said in a statement. Officers were searching for a 38-year-old Malaysian man who had previously been arrested for threatening his wife. Following the threats, the woman hired bodyguards last year, Criminal Investigation Department Director Shuhaily Zain said. The woman, who runs a travel agency, was at the airport to receive Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca, police said.
CHINA
Boat capsizes, killing 12
Two people have been detained following the capsizing of a tourist boat on a river in northeastern China that led to the deaths of 12 people, state media reported yesterday. The incident occurred on Saturday afternoon outside the city of Qinhuangdao near the coast of Hebei Province. Thirty-one people were thrown into the water. The boat was made by local villagers and was not equipped with life jackets or other safety equipment, Xinhua News Agency reported. The boat’s owner and operator were being held while an investigation was under way. The country has powerful rivers and such deadly accidents used to be common before major safety improvements over the past few years.
UNITED STATES
O.J. lawyer to fight payout
The executor of O.J. Simpson’s estate plans to fight to stop families of the late NFL star’s alleged murder victims from receiving funds from a US$33.5 million wrongful death judgement that found him liable for the killings, a report said on Saturday. Simpson, who died on Wednesday at the age of 76, was acquitted in 1995 of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in a court case dubbed “The Trial of the Century.” However, a subsequent 1997 civil trial found Simpson liable for the brutal double-slaying and ordered the US football icon-turned-actor to pay US$33.5 million to the victims’ families. The father of Ron Goldman, Fred Goldman, waged a decades-long pursuit of Simpson to force him to make good on the settlement. Simpson is believed to have paid only a fraction of the 1997 figure, with a 2021 report stating that the Goldmans had received just less than US$133,000. Simpson’s long-time lawyer Malcolm LaVergne told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Saturday that he was determined to ensure that the Goldman family not receive anything from Simpson’s estate. “It’s my hope that the Goldmans get zero, nothing,” LaVergne was quoted by the paper as saying. “Them specifically. And I will do everything in my capacity as the executor or personal representative to try and ensure that they get nothing.” LaVergne apparently was angered that the Goldmans at one point had gained control of the manuscript of Simpson’s book If I Did It, and retitled it, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. The Review-Journal reported that LaVergne was named as executor of Simpson’s estate in court documents filed on Friday.
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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