UNITED STATES
Library lifts Twain book ban
A Massachusetts library has put the Mark Twain work Eve’s Diary back on the shelf more than a century after it was banned. The Charlton Public Library’s trustees this week unanimously voted to return the book to circulation, reversing the board’s 1906 decision to ban the 1905 short story. Trustee Richard Whitehead said the move was made to coincide with the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. The story was written from the perspective of the biblical Adam and Eve. It was banned because trustee Frank Wakefield objected to nude illustrations of Eve.
ITALY
‘Living statue’ ban mulled
Culture officials in Rome are mulling a ban on “living statues,” arguing that dressing up in costume and standing on the street to solicit spare change has no artistic merit, media reported on Friday. “Living statues demonstrate no artistic activity, to the extent that they can’t be compared to mimes, and they amount to a veritable racket,” said Federico Mollicone, deputy culture head in Rome’s mayorship. The proposed ban is part of a broader bill from Mollicone’s office, which aims to regulate activity on Rome’s streets, reports said. Under the proposal, street musicians could have their instruments or speakers confiscated, and “deafening” music would be banned after 10pm.
UNITED STATES
Former drug czar jailed
A federal judge in Miami on Friday sentenced Bolivia’s former anti-drug czar to 14 years prison on drug trafficking charges, court sources said. General Rene Sanabria, who was Bolivian President Evo Morales’s top anti-drug official from 2007 to 2008, was arrested in Panama in February and extradited to Miami to face the charges. US District Judge Ursula Ungaro also sentenced Sanabria’s accomplice, Marcelo Foronda, to nine years in prison. According to trial testimony by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), last year Foronda made contact with US agents posing as Colombian drug traffickers who offered to distribute cocaine in Florida. Sanabria agreed to make sure the shipment was protected. In September last year, 144kg of cocaine was shipped to Miami.
COLOMBIA
Coal mine death toll rises
The death toll from an explosion at a coal mine in the north, believed to have been caused by an accumulation of methane gas, has risen to seven, authorities said on Friday. The country’s mining regulator Ingeominas had last put the death toll from Wednesday’s incident at El Diamante mine in the town of Socha at three. Emergency personnel subsequently retrieved the bodies of four more miners who had been trapped under the rubble, Ingeominas said.
UNITED STATES
US$16 muffin claim denied
Auditor claims of a whopping US$16 per muffin at a US government seminar are half-baked, the global hotel chain Hilton said on Friday. In a report, auditors at the Justice Department said the muffins were among several “extravagant and potentially wasteful” food items served at the training conference in August 2009 at the Capital Hilton in Washington. Not true, Hilton Worldwide shot back in a statement. “In Washington, the contracted breakfast included fresh fruit, coffee, juice, muffins, tax and gratuity, for an inclusive price of US$16 per person,” said the corporate parent of the Hilton, Conrad and Waldorf Astoria hotels. The inspector general’s office of the Justice Department said it stood by the 148-page report.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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