FRANCE
Hunt on after escape
A search was under way on Wednesday for armed assailants who ambushed a prison convoy, killing two prison officers, seriously injuring three others and freeing the inmate they were escorting. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal vowed that the gang would be caught, saying: “They will pay.” The escaped convict, Mohamed Amra, 30, has a long criminal record, with at least 13 convictions for robbery and other crimes, the first when he was 15, prosecutors said. International policing agency Interpol issued a Red Notice to find Amra. Hundreds of officers were mobilized in the search for Amra and the assailants, who rammed a car head-on into the prison van transporting him and opened fire on Tuesday.
UNITED STATES
Crash driver smoked pot
A man told investigators he smoked marijuana oil and took prescription drugs hours before he sideswiped a bus, killing eight Mexican farmworkers and injuring dozens more, an arrest report unsealed on Wednesday said. Bryan Maclean Howard, 41, pleaded not guilty to driving under the influence-manslaughter and remained jailed without bond for Tuesday’s crash. The Florida Highway Patrol said he drove his 2001 Ford pickup into the center line on a two-lane road and struck the bus, causing it to veer off the road, strike a tree and flip over.
UNITED STATES
Biden, Trump to debate
The Commission on Presidential Debates has an uncertain future after President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump on Wednesday struck an agreement to meet on their own. The Biden and Trump campaigns announced a deal to meet for debates in June on CNN and September on ABC. Just a day earlier, commission chairman Frank Fahrenkopf had sounded optimistic that the candidates would eventually come around to accepting its debates, saying that it would not immediately let go of its plans.
UNITED STATES
Barge hits bridge
A barge slammed into a bridge pillar in Galveston, Texas, on Wednesday, spilling oil into waters near busy shipping channels and closing the only road to a small island. No injuries were reported. The impact sent pieces of the bridge, which connects Galveston to Pelican Island, tumbling on top of the barge and shut down a stretch of waterway so crews could clean up the spill. The accident knocked one man off the vessel and into the water, but he was quickly recovered and was not injured, Galveston County Sheriff’s Office Major Ray Nolen said.
UNITED STATES
Monet sells for US$34m
A Monet sold for nearly US$35 million at auction on Wednesday, Sotheby’s said. Sotheby’s and rival auction house Christie’s launched their spring season on Monday. Claude Monet’s Meules a Giverny, which the French impressionist painted in 1893, went for US$34.8 million after a bidding war. Meanwhile, British-Mexican artist Leonora Carrington broke her own auction record when her Les Distractions de Dagobert sold for US$28.5 million. The new record places Carrington among the top-five most valuable female artists at auction, Sotheby’s said — and among the top four surrealist artists, “overtaking Max Ernst and Salvador Dali.” Meanwhile, Christie’s sold about US$115 million in contemporary art the prior evening, including a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting for US$32 million.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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