‘Auschwitz bookkeeper’ found guilty
LUENEBURG, Germany — Oskar Groening, a 94year-old German man known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the murder of 300,000 people at the Nazi death camp, in what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials.
He remains free until a decision on how much jail time he will have to serve.
Groening did not kill anyone while working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, but he sorted bank notes seized from Jews.
The trial went to the heart of the question of whether people who were minor participants in the Nazi regime during the Holocaust were themselves guilty.
‘El Chapo’ video released
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities released surveillance footage of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s dramatic weekend prison escape on Tuesday night, showing him pacing his cell while seeming particularly interested in what’s behind the waist-high wall of the shower stall.
After an initial hesitation, the Mexican government has agreed to accept the offer by the United States to help try to find and re-arrest Guzman, the leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Macedonia PM to resign
SKOPJE, Macedonia — Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of Macedonia, reeling from a long-running scandal over the wiretapping of thousands of people, has agreed to step down by Jan. 15 to pave the way for new elections in the spring.
The deal announced early Wednesday calls for the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, the main opposition party, which had walked out of Parliament in a dispute with the governing party, to return to the Legislature. After the prime minister resigns, a new government will take control.
China ‘Immortal’ dies
HONG KONG — Wan Li, the last of the Communist Party’s revolutionary elders known as the “Eight Immortals,” died Wednesday, state media reported. He was 98.
Mr. Wan had served as chairman of the National People’s Congress, the country’s top Legislature. He also had a hand in some of the country’s earliest economic overhauls after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.
Manila warned over ship
BEIJING — China on Wednesday condemned the Philippines for doing repairs to a rusting ship it ran aground on the Second Thomas Shoal since 1999, demanding Manila remove the vessel while adding that Beijing “reserved the right to take further measures.”
Manila regards the Second Thomas Shoal as being within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. China, which claims virtually all the South China Sea, says the reef is part of its territory.
Also in the world …
Researchers on an expedition on Seymour Island in the Antarctic have stumbled upon a 50-million-year-old worm sperm in a fossilized cocoon, the oldest animal sperm ever found. … The U.S. handed back to Iraq on Wednesday antiquities it said it had seized in a raid on Islamic State fighters in Syria, saying the haul was proof the militants were funding their war by smuggling ancient treasures. … Ukraine on Wednesday reported some of the strongest attacks by pro-Russian rebels since the signing of a peace deal in February, with eight government soldiers killed in the past 24 hours and separatists in turn accusing government forces of killing two of their fighters and a civilian.