UNITED STATES
Shooting rocks Dallas
A gunman killed two people and wounded four, including three police officers, before taking his own life on Saturday evening in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, police said. Haltom City Police Detective Matt Spillane yesterday said that all of those wounded in the residential neighborhood shooting had non-life threatening injuries and were expected to recover. Officers returned fire after being shot at while responding to a report of gunshots at a home around 6:45pm, he said. One officer was hit in both legs, and the other two officers were shot in their arms. The suspect died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Texas Rangers — the state’s elite police force — are taking over the investigation, Spillane said. A motive for the shooting was not immediately clear. “The main focus is on how and why this happened,” Spillane said. A woman was found dead inside a house and a man was found dead outside, Sergeant Rick Alexander said at a news conference on Saturday. The older adult woman who had initially called 911 was wounded, he said.
JAPAN
Power failure raises fears
A fire caused Japan’s largest power generator, JERA, to shut down a 500 megawatt unit at its Chiba thermal power station near Tokyo on Saturday, raising fears of an electricity crunch as a prolonged heatwave keeps demand at high levels. The fire broke out at about noon on Saturday near the steam valve of one of the turbines of the gas-fired combined-cycle power station, JERA said on Saturday, adding that the fire was extinguished about an hour later. JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, was checking all equipment at the unit where the fire occurred, and did not know when a restart would be possible, JERA said. The government expects energy supplies to remain tight during the peak summer season, and issued daily warnings for possible power shortages from Monday to Thursday last week as the country experienced its worst June heat since record-keeping began 147 years ago.
RUSSIA
Scientist held for treason
Russia has detained a second scientist in the space of a few days in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on suspicion of state treason, the TASS news agency said on Saturday, citing a source close to the investigation. Anatoly Maslov, a chief scientist at an institute of theoretical and applied mechanics in Novosibirsk, a city about 2,800km east of Moscow, was detained and transferred to a prison in the Russian capital after an investigation by the FSB intelligence agency, TASS said. Maslov’s arrest comes in the same week that Dmitry Kolker, a physics and mathematics professor at Novosibirsk State University, was detained on state treason charges for allegedly collaborating with China’s security services.
ISRAEL
Lebanese drones shot down
The Israeli military on Saturday said it shot down three remote-controlled aircraft launched by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah heading toward an area where an Israeli gas platform was recently installed in the Mediterranean Sea. The launch of the aircraft appeared to be an attempt by Hezbollah to influence US-brokered negotiations between Israel and Lebanon over their maritime border, an area that is rich in natural gas. The aircraft were spotted early and did not pose an “imminent threat,” the military said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the