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.
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
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
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