UNITED STATES
Chocolate plant blast kills 2
An explosion at a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania on Friday killed two people and left nine people missing, authorities said. Several other people were injured by the explosion at the R.M. Palmer Co plant, said West Reading Borough Police Chief Wayne Holben, who did not confirm the exact number of injured. The explosion just before 5pm sent a plume of black smoke into the air, destroying one building and damaging a neighboring building that included apartments. “It’s pretty leveled,” West Reading Borough Mayor Samantha Kaag said of the explosion site. “The building in the front, with the church and the apartments, the explosion was so big that it moved that building four feet forward.” The cause of the blast in the community about 96km northwest of Philadelphia was under investigation, Holden told reporters.
MEXICO
Court suspends elections bill
The Supreme Court on Friday suspended a controversial electoral reform bill after it was slammed by the country’s political opposition as an “attack” on democracy ahead of next year’s polls. The bill, which had been approved last month by lawmakers mostly from the ruling party, slashes the budget of the electoral commission — a key independent institution mandated to safeguard elections. Tens of thousands of people have protested the bill, which they say weakens the commission and tips the balance of power in the upcoming polls in favor of the ruling party. Court said that Judge Javier Laynez had “accepted the suspension requested by the National Electoral Institute concerning all the articles of the decree that are contested.” It granted the suspension because of the “possible violation of the political and electoral rights of citizens,” it said.
UNITED STATES
Haitian pleads guilty
Dual Haitian-Chilean citizen Rodolphe Jaar, one of several men accused in the 2021 murder of Haitian president Jovenel Moise, on Friday pled guilty to charges related to the assassination, court documents show. Jaar, 50, admitted before a judge that he provided “material support and resources” knowing that they would be used to kidnap and kill the president, his plea statement says. Jaar, a businessman, is the first among 11 people charged by US prosecutors in south Florida with a role in planning the assassination. The 53-year-old Haitian leader was gunned down on July 7, 2021, by Colombian mercenaries at his private residence in Port-au-Prince. His security detail did not intervene.
UNITED STATES
Migrants die in train car
Two migrants were found dead and at least 10 were hospitalized on Friday after police in South Texas received a call that they were “suffocating” in a freight train traveling near the US-Mexico border. Border Patrol was informed of the phone call and stopped the train, the Uvalde Police Department said in a statement. Union Pacific railroad said in a statement that the people were found in two cars on the train traveling east from Eagle Pass bound for San Antonio: 12 in a shipping container and three in a hopper car. The two people who died were in the shipping container, it said. Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez told the San Antonio-Express News that dispatchers received a 911 call about 3:50pm from an unknown person seeking help. “We’re still trying to determine if it was from someone inside the car,” Rodriguez said. “We’re assuming it was from inside one of the cars.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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