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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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