■UNITED KINGDOM
BA sorry for false warning
Passengers on a British Airways (BA) flight from London to Hong Kong were mistakenly told to prepare for a crash landing, causing panic onboard. The carrier said on Friday it had apologized for causing customers distress after an emergency message was accidentally triggered. Passengers heard the message: “This is an emergency. We may shortly need to make an emergency landing on water.” Michelle Lord, who was onboard, told The Sun tabloid: “People were terrified. We all thought we were going to die,” BA said it is investigating how the error happened. “Our cabin crew immediately made an announcement following the message advising customers that it was played in error and that the flight would continue as normal,” the airline said in a statement.
■SPAIN
Man cuts off penis
A Kazakh man cut off his penis at Madrid’s Barajas airport in order to avoid being extradited home and was hospitalized in a serious condition, local media reported. The 52-year-old man had finished serving a five-year prison sentence for a violent crime and was to be extradited back to Kazakhstan overnight on Monday. Despite being escorted by several police officers, he managed to slip a knife out of his clothing and cut off his penis. The man was admitted to a Madrid hospital and was still in a serious condition on Friday, local media said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Smart dancers lap it up
One in four lap dancers has a university degree and the majority of those involved in the industry enjoy their work, earning up to £48,000 (US$74,500) a year, academic research has found. Researchers from the University of Leeds discovered that many women had chosen to get into lap dancing for the money or because it fitted in with their careers. “These young women do not buy the line that they are being exploited, because they are the ones making the money out of a three-minute dance and a bit of a chat,” Teela Sanders told the Independent newspaper. “You have got to have a certain way about how you to do it. They say 80 percent of the job is talking. These women do work hard for their money — you don’t just turn up and wiggle your bum.” The research, which involved interviews with 300 dancers, found there was a high level of job satisfaction and all had some qualifications.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Family allege spy smeared
The family of a murdered spy said on Friday that they were “deeply upset” over claims about his private life and suggested the security services may be behind a smear campaign. Gareth Williams’s body was discovered in a holdall in the bath of an apartment in London on Monday. Police believe he may have been dead for two weeks. Williams, 30, worked at GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping and security center and was days from completing a year-long secondment at MI6. Reports that police had found evidence linking him to a male escort agency and that bondage equipment was found at his apartment were challenged by his family. William Hughes, 62, a cousin of Williams’s mother, Ellen, said “I don’t see any evidence of it. It never crossed my mind that Gareth was that sort of person. He left home at a young age and what happened in his private life was his business ... It is heartbreaking that he has died so young and his family have enough on their plate without having to read these stories.” Hughes said it was possible the government or another agency might be trying to discredit Williams.
■Venezuela
Politician offers breast boost
A politician is holding an unusual raffle to raise campaign cash. The grand prize: breast implants. For a little under US$6 a ticket, donors get the chance to win the pricey operation free of charge. Breast enlargement is widely popular in image-conscious Venezuela. In recent years as many as 30,000 women have had the operation annually, according to the nation’s Plastic Surgery Society. Gustavo Rojas, who is running as an alternate for the National Assembly in Sept. 26 elections, said there is a great demand for the surgery.
■United States
Torpedo found in city
A police bomb squad had to be called to a Philadelphia construction site after someone found an old, inert torpedo. PennDOT spokesman Charles Metzger says a transportation department archeological team found two men sitting on the torpedo drinking beers on Friday morning. He says the men told the archeologists they had found the munition. Metzger says the dig team called police, who dispatched a bomb squad. The squad determined the torpedo was not explosive. The construction site is related to an Interstate 95 interchange project in the city’s Kensington neighborhood, close to the location of an old shipyard where warships were built during World War II.
■Italy
Killer wants to adopt
A US student convicted in Italy of murdering her British roommate has told an Italian lawmaker in a series of jailhouse conversations that she hopes to adopt children and be a writer when free. Lawmaker Rocco Girlanda said yesterday that he kept a diary of his frequent visits with Amanda Knox in her Perugia jail, material that formed the basis of a book being published in Italy and the US this fall. Girlanda’s Take Me With You — Talks with Amanda Knox in Prison also includes letters and poetry Knox sent to Girlanda, president of an Italian-US foundation. Knox, 23, is appealing her Dec. 5 conviction for murder and sexual assault in the 2007 death of Meredith Kercher. She was sentenced to 26 years in prison.
■United States
Envoy’s girl falls to death
The 17-year-old daughter of the US ambassador to Thailand was killed on Friday after falling out of a 25th story apartment window in New York, police said. Nicole John was at an overnight party with dozens of friends when she had the accident, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. “At the scene there was a camera. She may have looked out of the window to take a picture” before she fell to her death, he said. Kelly said an investigation was under way and the renter of the apartment has been placed under arrest for allowing under age drinking on his premises. The dead girl’s father is Eric John, a career diplomat and US Ambassador to Bangkok since 2007.
■United States
Hurricane Danielle weakens
Hurricane Danielle, churning in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, weakened to a Category Two storm early yesterday as it moved north well away from Bermuda, US forecasters said. “Little change in strength is forecast during the next 24 hours, and gradual weakening is expected to begin on Sunday and Sunday night,” the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. The storm, which was turning north, was forecast to leave Bermuda unscathed as it passed well east of the Atlantic island territory late yesterday. Danielle was a Category Four storm on Friday.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
‘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
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
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,
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