While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Dec 2
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George Santos is surrounded by journalists as he leaves the US Capitol, after his fellow members of Congress voted to expel him from the House of Representatives.
PHOTO: AFP
US House ousts congressman Santos in historic vote
US lawmakers voted on Dec 1 to expel George Santos, the scandal-plagued politician who lied his way into Congress and has been indicted on charges of bankrolling his lavish lifestyle with stolen donor cash.
Earning a rebuke previously reserved for traitors and convicted criminals, the New York Republican is only the third person to join Washington’s rogues gallery of ejected lawmakers since the Civil War.
He swept into the House in 2022, helping the Republicans grab a tiny majority, but it quickly emerged that almost his entire backstory was a fabrication, from his education and religion to his personal history and professional experience.
Santos, 35, has been indicted on dozens of federal charges of stealing from campaign donors, credit card fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
South Korea launches first spy satellite with SpaceX
A SpaceX rocket on Dec 1 launched South Korea’s first military spy satellite, intensifying a space race on the peninsula after Pyongyang launched its own first military eye in the sky last week.
Seoul’s reconnaissance satellite, carried by one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, lifted off from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base in California at 10.19am local time (2.19am on Dec 2, Singapore time).
The rocket was emblazoned with the word “KOREA” across it.
Five senators ask Biden to impose China travel ban
Five Republican senators led by Marco Rubio on Dec 1 asked President Joe Biden’s administration to ban travel between the United States and China after a spike in Chinese respiratory illness cases.
“We should immediately restrict travel between the United States and (China) until we know more about the dangers posed by this new illness,” said the letter, signed by Mr Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The rise in cases became a global issue last week when the World Health Organisation asked China for more information, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children by the Programme for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.
Trump can be sued for Jan 6 riots, US court says
A US federal appeals court ruled on Dec 1 that former president Donald Trump can be sued over the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol that saw his supporters attempt to thwart certification of his election loss to Joe Biden.
Trump could now face civil action over the violent clashes which saw a mob overrun law enforcement at the nerve centre of American democracy.
More than 1,200 people have been arrested over the melee.
‘How are you not ashamed?’ gran asked Hamas leader
After Hamas gunmen stormed into 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz’s house and shot her husband in the hand, they threw her on a motorbike and dragged her off to a tunnel network beneath Gaza, her grandson Daniel says.
It was in the “very damp”, “very deep” warren of subterranean rooms and passages that his grandmother – now released – told family she encountered someone few Israelis have for years: Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, and a mastermind of the Oct 7 attacks.
“She said she saw him, and told him: ‘How are you not ashamed? How are they not ashamed to do such things to people who fought for peace their entire lives?‘“ Daniel told AFP, in Tel Aviv. “And she said he stayed quiet.”
