NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Poland election: Poland’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the results of President Andrzej Duda’s narrow victory in last month’s presidential elections, the country’s closest contest since the fall of communism in 1989, a decision that clears the path for the country’s conservative Law and Justice party to continue in power. Thousands of supporters of the opposition candidate and rights groups had filed legal challenges in the country’s highest court demanding the election be reassessed after Duda edged Rafal Trzaskowski, the opposition candidate and the liberal mayor of Warsaw. Duda secured 51.03% of the vote, while Trzaskowski won 48.97%, in a midJuly runoff.
_2 Notre Dame organ: The organ that once thundered through Notre Dame Cathedral is being taken apart after last year’s devastating fire consumed the cathedral’s roof and toppled its spire. The mammoth task of dismantling, cleaning and reassembling France’s largest musical instrument started Monday and is expected to last nearly four years. Once restored, it will take six months just to tune the organ, according to the state agency overseeing Notre Dame’s restoration. Its music isn’t expected to resound again through the medieval Paris monument until 2024. The 8,000pipe organ survived the fire. But the blaze coated the instrument in toxic lead dust that must now be painstakingly removed.
_3 Murder trial: A British woman accused of stabbing her husband to death at their Malaysian resort home avoided the gallows and was sentenced to 42 months in jail on Monday after she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. Lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo said prosecutors reduced the murder charge against Samantha Jones, 51, to culpable homicide, which is murder without intent, after the defense appealed to the attorneygeneral’s office. A conviction for murder carries a mandatory death sentence by hanging. The lawyer said the couple, who had been married for 17 years, were devoted to each other but Jones was struggling with physical violence by her 63yearold husband, John Williams Jones.
_4 China accusation: Beijing on Monday accused the United States of “monitoring, harassing and willfully detaining” Chinese students and researchers in the U.S. Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s comments follow the denial of a bail request in California for a university researcher accused of lying about her ties to China’s military and Communist Party to gain access to the United States. Wang said China had no intention of helping Juan Tang escape the country, but did not otherwise comment directly on the accusations against her. In denying bail, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes said Tang, 37, would have reason to leave the country if released. Tang has been held without bail since July 23 when she was arrested after she left the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco to seek medical care for her asthma.
_5 Dam dispute: Three key Nile basin countries on Monday resumed their negotiations to resolve a yearslong dispute over the operation and filling of a giant hydroelectric dam that Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile, officials said. The talks came a day after tens of thousands of Ethiopians flooded the streets of their capital, Addis Ababa, in a governmentbacked rally to celebrate the first stage of the filling of the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Ethiopia says the dam will provide electricity to millions of its nearly 110 million citizens. Egypt, which depends on the Nile River to supply its booming population of 100 million people with fresh water, asserts the dam poses an existential threat. Sudan, between the two countries, says the project could endanger its own dams.