IRAQ
Shopping mall fire kills 61
A fire tore through a shopping mall in the eastern city of Kut overnight, killing at least 60 people, authorities said yesterday, as grief-stricken families searched for missing relatives. Officials have launched an investigation into the blaze, the latest in a country where safety regulations are frequently neglected. At least two people said they lost five relatives who had gone to the newly opened Hyper Mall for shopping and dinner. “The tragic fire claimed the lives of 61 innocent citizens, most of whom suffocated in bathrooms, and among them 14 charred bodies yet to be identified,” the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement.
Photo: AP
MALAYSIA
Police raid ‘gay party’
Authorities arrested more than a dozen men in the northeastern state of Kelantan last month during a late night raid of a “gay party,” a police official said yesterday. Homosexuality is a crime in the Muslim-majority nation, and rights groups have warned of growing intolerance toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Kelantan State Police Chief Mohd Yusoff Mamat said police arrested 20 men after responding to a tip-off and conducting surveillance of a rented property in the state capital, Kota Bharu. “During questioning, they admitted to being part of a gay group,” he told a news conference. Police charged three of the men for possession of homosexual pornographic material on their mobile phones, but authorities could not prosecute the other men as there were no specific laws or physical evidence to charge them with, he added.
UNITED STATES
Earthquake rocks Alaska
A magnitude 7.3 earthquake on Wednesday struck off the coast of Alaska, triggering a tsunami warning that was later withdrawn, the US Geological Survey said. The earthquake took place at 12:37pm, with its epicenter about 87km south of the island town of Sand Point, the agency said. The epicenter had a relatively shallow depth of 20km.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Potter’ stars lose licenses
Two stars of the Harry Potter films, including actress Emma Watson, were each banned from driving for six months on Wednesday after being caught speeding in separate incidents. Watson, 35, who played Hermione Granger, was banned for driving 61kph in a 48kph zone in southeastern Banbury in July last year. Zoe Wanamaker, 76, who played Quidditch teacher Madame Hooch in Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, was banned for six months for driving 74kph in a 64kph in southeastern Berkshire in August last year.
JAPAN
Man seeks go-kart revenge
A man enraged by the noise of go-karting popular with foreign tourists was arrested on Wednesday for trying to set fire to the motor vehicles, police and local media said. The 28-year-old man was arrested on charges of attempted arson, Tokyo police said. He was suspected of setting fire last month to waste on the premises of a Tokyo company that operates go-karting tours, with flames spreading to its parked go-karts, police said. Public broadcaster NHK quoted the suspect as telling investigators that he was “stressed out by the engine noise of the go-karts.” His workplace was reportedly located adjacent to the scene of the fire. The go-karting operator received a letter in May threatening to “set karts aflame if engines are turned on after tomorrow,” NHK reported, adding that police were probing a link to the arson attack.
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
‘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
‘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
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS