UNITED STATES
Ship blast hurts 21
Twenty-one people sustained minor injuries in an explosion and fire on Sunday onboard a ship at Naval Base San Diego, military officials said. The blaze was reported shortly before 9am on the USS Bonhomme Richard, Naval Surface Force spokesman Mike Raney said. Seventeen sailors and four civilians were hospitalized with “non-life threatening injuries,” Raney said. The cause of the fire was under investigation, but Rear Admiral Philip Sobeck, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the navy thinks the fire began somewhere in a lower cargo hold.
UNITED STATES
Actress Kelly Preston dies
Actress Kelly Preston died on Sunday, her husband, John Travolta, said. She was 57. Travolta said in an Instagram post that his wife of 28 years died after a two-year battle with breast cancer. “She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many,” he said. The couple had three children together. Travolta and Preston met while filming 1988’s The Experts. They last starred together in the 2018 film Gotti.
CANADA
Party to summon PM
The Conservative Party on Sunday said that it would call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to testify before a parliamentary committee over a government contract awarded to a charity that had paid his family large sums of money. Conservative lawmaker Pierre Poilievre told a news conference that his party would ask Trudeau to appear under oath before the House of Commons’ finance committee. “Either the PM can agree voluntarily to show up and attend — that’s what he will do if he has nothing to hide — or parliament can compel him to appear,” Poilievre said.
GERMANY
Armed man sought in forest
Police in the Black Forest are hunting for a homeless man in combat gear and armed with a bow and arrow and other weapons. About 100 police officers, including special forces, canine teams and helicopters, have been dispatched as the search for the man entered its second day yesterday. Police in Oppenau warned local residents to stay at home and not pick up hitchhikers. They released a photograph of the suspect who has a bow and arrow, a knife and at least one gun and is known to the police for previous offenses, including illegal possession of firearms. Police said they were informed on Sunday that a suspicious man was hanging around a hut in the forest. When officers approached him they found that he was armed with a bow and arrow, a knife and a pistol. He then “suddenly and completely unexpectedly” threatened them with the firearm, leaving them “no time to react to the dangerous situation,” police said. He asked the police to put down their weapons and ran away, “presumably” taking their arms with him.
POLAND
Puma owner gives up
A former soldier who fled into a forest with his pet puma to avoid handing it over to a zoo gave himself up to police on Sunday after a three-day search. “Kamil Stanek voluntarily turned himself over to police in Zawiercie and was later released,” the police in Zawiercie said on Facebook. The puma, called Nubia, was transferred to the care of a zoo. Keeping such dangerous animals is banned and the man had been ordered by a court to turn the animal over to a zoo.
AFGHANISTAN
Dozens hurt in blast, clashes
Gunmen clashed with security forces following a car-bomb blast at a government compound in Samangan Province yesterday in an incident that wounded at least 43 people. The attack took place close to an office of the National Security Directorate, officials said. The clashes lasted for several hours, and deaths were expected, a health official said. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the incident.
JAPAN
Abe promises flood relief
The government is to allocate US$3.7 billion for the recovery of regions hit by devastating flooding and landslides that killed at least 72 people, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised yesterday. The torrential rain started on July 4 in Kyushu and later hit the center of the nation. It prompted evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of people. The national meteorological agency yesterday warned that more heavy downpours were possible.
INDONESIA
Alleged pedophile dies
A French man accused of molesting more than 300 local children has died after apparently trying to kill himself in detention, police said yesterday. Francois Camille Abello was taken to a hospital after a guard found him lying in his cell with a wire wrapped around his neck, Jakarta police spokesman Yusri Yunus said. “His condition was stable a day later, but then deteriorated [because] of brain damage due to lack of oxygen after suicide attempt,” Yunus said. Abello, 65, who was arrested late last month, had been paraded in handcuffs at a news conference on Thursday where police said videos on his computer showed him engaging in illegal sex acts with 305 children aged 10 to 17. Police said Abello had not cooperated with investigators and refused to provide passwords for programs on his computer.
NEW ZEALAND
Shooter fires defense team
The Australian white supremacist who admitting killing 51 worshipers in a mass shooting at two Christchurch mosques last year has dismissed his lawyers and is to represent himself when he is sentenced next month. Brenton Harrison Tarrant in March pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one charge of engaging in a terrorist act. His sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin on Aug. 24 and could last more than three days. Tarrant’s defense team, lawyers Shane Tait and Jonathan Hudson, yesterday applied during a hearing for permission to withdraw as his counsel, telling the court they had been instructed by Tarrant to withdraw as he wishes to exercise his right to represent himself.
MALI
Appeals for restraint
The UN, the EU, the African Union and the West African bloc ECOWAS have appealed for restraint after a political crisis spiraled into bloodshed over the weekend. In a statement issued overnight on Sunday, representatives of the four groups in Bamako said that they were very concerned. They attacked the use of lethal force by the security forces and urged dialogue, but said that the arrest of protest leaders was an obstacle to this. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 75, is facing calls for his resignation over a long-delayed parliamentary poll. Eleven people have died and 124 have been injured since Friday, a hospital official in Bamako said. Keita has said that he would dissolve the constitutional court, the focus of anger since it overturned provisional results for parliamentary elections earlier this year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing