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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
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
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
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