UNITED STATES
VP slams Florida ‘extremists’
Vice President Kamala Harris said extremists want to “replace history with lies” as she traveled to Florida on Friday to assail Republican efforts to overhaul educational standards. Her trip came two days after the Florida Board of Education approved a revised black history curriculum to satisfy legislation signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The board’s guidelines cover “benchmark clarifications,” including one for middle school students that states “instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Harris said that “adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of ... depriving people of humanity in our world. How is it that anyone could suggest that, in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”
CANADA
Officer accused of PRC work
Authorities have arrested a retired police officer on charges of foreign interference on behalf of China, officials said on Friday. William Majcher, 60, is accused of using “his knowledge and his extensive network of contacts in Canada to obtain intelligence or services to benefit the People’s Republic of China [PRC],” the federal police said in a statement. Majcher, a resident of Hong Kong, has been under investigation since 2021, and authorities said he “contributed to the Chinese government’s efforts to identify and intimidate an individual outside the scope of Canadian law.” Majcher is facing charges of committing “preparatory acts for the benefit of a foreign entity,” as well as conspiracy.
UNITED STATES
‘Help me’ sign saves girl
A 13-year-old girl kidnapped in Texas and sexually assaulted was rescued in Southern California when passersby saw her hold up a “help me” sign in a parked car, police and federal authorities said. The rescue occurred July 9 in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, when officers responded to a trouble call and found the “visibly emotional and distressed girl,” police said in a news release on Thursday. “Through their investigation, officers learned the Good Samaritans were in a parking lot when they saw the victim in a parked vehicle holding up a piece of paper with ‘help me’ written on it. They acknowledged the note and immediately called 911,” police said. Steven Robert Sablan, 61, of Cleburne, Texas, was arrested and was on Thursday indicted by a federal grand jury, the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles said.
UNITED STATES
Tony Bennett dies aged 96
Tony Bennett, the last in a generation of classic US crooners whose ceaselessly cheery spirit bridged generations to make him a hitmaker across seven decades, died in New York on Friday. He was 96. Raised in an era when big bands defined US pop music, Bennett achieved an improbable second act when he started winning over young audiences in the 1990s — not by reinventing himself, but by demonstrating his sheer joy in belting out the standards. At age 88, Bennett in 2014 became the oldest person ever to reach No. 1 on the US album chart through a collection of duets with Lady Gaga, who became his friend and touring companion. Bennett, who revealed in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, died in his hometown, his publicist Sylvia Weiner announced, without revealing a cause.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home