UNITED STATES
Trump pick withdraws
Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead a government watchdog agency on Tuesday announced he was withdrawing his candidacy after it was revealed he reportedly boasted about having a “Nazi streak.” The 30-year-old attorney, whom Trump picked to head the Office of Special Counsel, was facing mounting criticism from Democrats and Republicans after media reports this week revealed text messages with racist content. His nomination became embroiled in controversy after it was revealed that he told some fellow Republicans in a text chain that he had a “Nazi streak” and advocated for the Martin Luther King Jr national holiday to be scrapped, Politico reported on Monday, citing a text chat it had viewed. “MLK Jr was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” Ingrassia allegedly wrote in the chat from January last year, Politico reported. Without confirming the authenticity of the texts, Ingrassia’s lawyer Andrew Paltzik told Politico they were “taken out of context” and imbued with “self-mockery and satirical humor.”
Photo: AP
SRI LANKA
Lawmaker killed in his office
An opposition politician was yesterday shot dead in his office, police said, the latest in a wave of assassinations and the first to target a political figure. Weligama Council Chairman Lasantha Wickramasekara, 38, was meeting with constituents when a gunman burst in and fired multiple times with a revolver. No one else was wounded, and the shooter fled the scene. “An investigation is under way to track down the killer,” police said in a statement, adding that the motive for the attack remains unclear. Wickramasekara was a member of the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya party, which has been locked in a bitter power struggle with the ruling party over control of the Weligama council.
PERU
State of emergency declared
Interim President Jose Jeri on Tuesday announced a state of emergency in Lima and the neighboring Port of Callao, after weeks of anti-government protests over corruption and organized crime. “The state of emergency approved by the Council of Ministers will take effect at midnight on Wednesday and will last for 30 days in Metropolitan Lima and Callao,” Jeri said in an address to the nation broadcast by state television. Under the state of emergency, the government can send the army to patrol the streets and restrict freedom of assembly and other rights. This is the first major action by the interim president since he took office nearly two weeks ago to address the spiraling crime crisis.
FRANCE
Louvre reopens after heist
The Louvre Museum in Paris yesterday reopened its doors to visitors, three days after it had been shuttered over the theft of precious royal jewelry. From 9am, the museum’s usual opening time, the first visitors began entering the world-famous institution, although the museum said the Apollo Gallery, where Sunday’s theft occurred, remained closed. Disappointed tourists were turned away at the entrance of the Louvre in the heart of Paris the day after the audacious daylight theft of about 88 million euros (US$102 million) in jewelry, and it remained closed on Tuesday. “We were really hoping it would be open. We had booked for today, and we wouldn’t have had another chance to come,” said one visitor, Fanny, who traveled from south of the country with her daughter.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
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