FIJI
No tsunami risk after quake
A magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck off Fiji yesterday, the US Geological Survey said, but it was too deep to generate a tsunami and there were no reports of damage. The quake hit at 12:19pm 361km east of the Pacific nation’s capital, Suva, at a depth of 563km, US seismologists said. The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was “no tsunami threat because the earthquake is located too deep inside the Earth.” The quake, and several aftershocks ranging up to magnitude 6.8, were felt as a rippling effect in the outer Lau islands group, but residents in Suva, on the main island of Viti Levu, said they did not feel a thing.
UNITED STATES
Hunter becomes hunted
Utah authorities said a bow hunter suffered minor chest and leg injuries when he was attacked by a mountain lion that stalked him and his father before and after the attack. The attack happened on Saturday in mountains near Kamas, east of Salt Lake City, Division of Wildlife Resources spokesman Phil Douglas said. Conservation officers were sent to the scene, and a man and his dog were attempting to track the mountain lion so it can be euthanized if found because of the attack, Douglas said. The wounded hunter declined medical attention because he wanted to continue hunting, Summit County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Andrew Wright said.
EGYPT
New curbs on Web passed
President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has ratified an anti-cybercrime law that rights groups have said paves the way for censoring online media. The law, published on Saturday in the country’s official gazette, empowers authorities to order the blocking of Web sites that publish content considered a threat to national security. Viewers attempting to access blocked sites can also be sentenced to one year in prison or fined up to 100,000 Egyptian pounds (US$5,593) under the law. The parliament last month approved a bill placing personal social media accounts and Web sites with more than 5,000 followers under the supervision of the top media authority, which can block them if they are found to be disseminating false news.
UNITED STATES
Man loses digit in golf brawl
A man has bitten off another man’s finger during a fight at a Massachusetts golf course. A 47-year-old man was on Friday arrested at the Southers Marsh Golf Club in Plymouth after he apparently got into a fight with another golfer and bit off a part of his thumb, WCVB-TV reported. The victim’s thumb had been bitten off to his knuckle and he was transported to a local hospital for treatment, the station reported. The incident happened at about sunset, it reported. The attacker was arrested and charged with mayhem.
MEXICO
Turtle deaths investigated
Environmental authorities are investigating the deaths of more than 100 endangered sea turtles whose carcasses have turned up at a wildlife sanctuary on the Pacific coast of Chiapas State. The environmental protection agency on Saturday said 102 olive ridley, six hawksbill and five Galapagos green bill turtles were found dead at the Playas de Puerto Arista Sanctuary between July 24 and Monday last week. Authorities are testing the water and conducting autopsies to determine possible causes of death, it said. Asphyxiation, fishing hooks or harmful algae blooms might have killed the turtles, authorities said.
The attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump by a shooter at a rally in Pennsylvania has confirmed the worst fears of public figures warning that an escalation in incendiary political rhetoric on all sides could lead to bloodshed. US lawmakers and analysts have been voicing concern since the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot that increasingly bellicose campaign language was becoming a worrying contusion on the US body politic ahead of November’s presidential election. The danger was vividly illustrated in 2022, when then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked with a hammer by a far-right conspiracy theorist
A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea in November last year — just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, the South Korean National Intelligence Service said yesterday. North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu had been responsible for political affairs at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019, tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba,” South Korea’s Chosun Daily reported. Ri defected to South Korea with his wife and children in early November, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since then-North Korean deputy ambassador to the
HIGH TENSIONS: Local media reported that police had fired into the air to try to disperse an angry crowd at the garbage dump, while investigators called for calm and cooperation A total of eight bodies, all female, have been recovered so far from a garbage dump near Nairobi, Kenya’s acting police chief said yesterday, after authorities a day earlier confirmed they had found more bags filled with dismembered female body parts, the latest macabre discovery that has horrified and angered the country. Detectives have been scouring the site in the Mukuru area of Nairobi since the mutilated corpses of at least six women were found on Friday in sacks floating in a sea of garbage. On Saturday, the Kenyan Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said that five bags had been retrieved from
A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than 100 victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s black community, the mayor said on Friday. Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of C.L. Daniel from Georgia were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and officials from the lab. The man was in his 20s when he was killed. “This is one family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial, after not knowing where they were for over a century,”