Man in wheelchair found with cocaine
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Federal authorities say a man has been arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina, after he was stopped in the city’s airport with more than 23 pounds of cocaine concealed in the seat cushions of a motorized wheelchair.
U. S. Customs and Border Protection officers encountered the traveler as he was arriving at Charlotte Douglas International Airport from the Dominican Republic this week, according to a Friday news release. The four packages containing cocaine were discovered within the seat cushions and had an estimated street value of $378,000, according to the news release.
The 22-year-old man was charged with trafficking in cocaine. Officials say he was a lawful, permanent U.S. resident.
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — A small private airplane mistakenly entered restricted airspace near President Joe Biden’s Delaware vacation home Saturday,
prompting the brief evacuation of the president and first lady, the White House and the Secret Service said.
The White House said there was no threat to the Biden or his family and that precautionary measures were taken. After the situation was assessed, Biden and his wife, Jill, returned to their Rehoboth Beach home.
The Secret Service said in a statement that the plane was immediately escorted from the restricted airspace after “mistakenly entering a secured area.” The agency said it would interview the pilot who, according to a preliminary investigation, was not on the proper radio channel and was not following published flight guidance.
SEOUL, South Korea — The U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan concluded a naval exercise with South Korea in the Philippine Sea on Saturday,
the two militaries said, amid signs that North Korea is possibly preparing to conduct its first nuclear test explosion since 2017.
The three-day exercise that began Thursday in international waters off the Japanese island of Okinawa was apparently the allies’ first joint drill involving a U.S. aircraft carrier since
November 2017.
The Ronald Reagan then joined the USS Theodore Roosevelt and Nimitz in a rare three-carrier exercise with South Korean naval vessels during North Korea’s last provocative run in nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acknowledged Saturday that Iran took the oil from two Greek tankers last month in helicopter-launched raids in the Persian Gulf.
The confiscations were retaliation for Greece’s role in the U.S. seizure of crude oil from an Iranian-flagged tanker the same week in the Mediterranean Sea over violating Washington’s harsh sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
“They steal Iranian oil off the Greek coast, then our brave men who don’t fear death respond and seized the enemy’s oil tanker,” Khamenei said during an 80-minute speech on the anniversary of the death of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “But they use their media empire and extensive propaganda to accuse Iran of piracy. Who is the pirate? You stole our oil, we took it back from you. Taking back a stolen property is not called stealing,” he added.
HONG KONG — Heavy police force patrolled Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on Saturday after authorities for a third consecutive year banned public commemoration of the anniversary of the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, with vigils overseas the only place marking the event.
For decades, Hong Kong and nearby Macao were the only places in China allowed to commemorate the violent suppression by army troops of student protesters demanding greater democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed.
The vigil organizers, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded last year after many of its leaders were arrested on suspicion of violating the national security law, which was imposed following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.