UNITED STATES
Biden mulls Assange case
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said Washington was “considering” a request by Australia to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange on espionage charges. The Australian parliament in February passed a motion with the prime minister’s support calling for an end to the legal saga surrounding Assange, who is currently held in Britain while fighting extradition to the US. “We’re considering it,” Biden replied at the White House when asked by a reporter if he had a response to Australia’s request. Australian citizen Assange, 52, who has been held in a London prison since 2019, has been indicted by the US government over his role in the 2010 leaking of a huge trove of classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
PHILIPIPNES
Navy pilots die after crash
Two navy pilots died yesterday after a helicopter crash near a public market south of the capital, Manila. The Robinson R22 aircraft was on a training flight when it went down in Cavite city at about 6am, the navy said in a statement. Two officer pilots on board were taken to hospital, but died from their injuries, it said. The navy vowed a “thorough investigation” into the cause of the crash. “No stone will be left unturned as we endeavor to prevent this kind of accident from happening again,” navy spokesman Commander John Percie Alcos said. The crashed helicopter was the only Robinson R22 in the navy’s fleet.
UNITED STATES
Eclipse ‘sparks’ killings
An astrology influencer worried about the recent solar eclipse stabbed her partner to death, then pushed her two children out of her moving car before fatally slamming the vehicle into a tree, a report said on Wednesday. Danielle Johnson, who peddled weekly “aura cleanses” on her Web site and offered online zodiac readings, told followers that Monday’s total solar eclipse in North America was “the epitome of spiritual warfare.” Early on Monday morning, she knifed her air force veteran partner dead, before taking off in a Porsche Cayenne with her two daughters, the Los Angeles Times reported. Hurtling down the major 405 freeway before dawn, Johnson shoved the children— one nine years old, the other only eight months — out of the moving vehicle. Only the nine-year-old child survived. Half an hour later police were called to the scene of a horrific crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in which the luxury vehicle had slammed into a tree at 160kph. Johnson’s body had been so disfigured in the crash that identification was difficult, the Times reported. Police who went to the family apartment found a trail of bloody footprints and the body of 29-year-old Jaelen Allen Chaney. He had been stabbed in the heart.
NEW ZEALAND
Lego thieves charged
Police yesterday said they have built a strong case against two Lego-loving shoplifters charged with stealing NZ$20,000 (US$11,973) of the popular toy. The haul of brightly colored interlocking plastic bricks was stolen in recent months from numerous stores across Auckland, police said. The thieves constructed an audacious way of pinching sets of the building blocks.“ In each instance, the alleged thieves brazenly created a diversion in the store by setting off the fire alarm,” sergeant Karen Tabb said in a statement. A 45-year-old woman and a 34-year-old man have been charged with 30 counts of shoplifting. The thieves also face charges under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act for using fire alarms as a distraction, police said.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
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