CRIMEA
Pro-Russia lawmaker shot
Former Ukrainian lawmaker Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Russian figure who sources said Moscow had enlisted to lead a puppet administration in Kyiv after Russia’s invasion, was shot twice in a late-night attack in the sanatorium where he lives, family and officials said on Friday. A source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) intelligence agency said the shooting was a special operation conducted by the agency. The attack took place in Yalta in Crimea. “He had been for a long time on the list of traitors who have to answer for their crimes. He was not just a fan of the ‘Russian world,’ but rather a person who came along with Russian tanks in order to capture Kyiv,” the SBU source said. Tsaryov was “in critical condition, with doctors fighting to save his life, but there is a good chance he will be kicking the bucket,” they said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Rolling Stones top charts
The Rolling Stones on Friday topped the British music charts, securing their 14th UK No. 1 album with new record Hackney Diamonds. Rockers Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, who released the record last week, outsold the rest of the top five of the Official Albums Chart, the Official Charts Co said in a statement. The band, which formed in 1962, joins The Beatles, Robbie Williams and Bruce Springsteen as acts with the most studio albums — 11 — to reach No. 1 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart, it added. Hackney Diamonds, the Stones’ first album of original material since 2005 and the first recording since drummer Charlie Watts died in 2021, also topped the Official Vinyl Albums Chart. The album also topped charts in Australia and Germany.
UNITED STATES
Phillips challenges Biden
Representative Dean Phillips said he would challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, seizing on worries about the economy and Biden’s age. Saying he would represent “America’s exhausted majority,” the Minnesota representative laid out a populist Democratic platform focusing on household economic issues on Friday. “I think it’s time for a new generation,” Phillips told CBS News on Friday. “I think the time is now because I think four years from now it might be too late.”
UNITED STATES
Home with meth lab for sale
Do you secretly dream of being Walter White, the chemistry teacher-turned-druglord from Breaking Bad? Now is your chance to own a luxury California home complete with meth lab — for sale at US$1.55 million. The six-bedroom house in tony San Jose offers a “great location” with easy access to the freeway, according to a realtor’s listing. There are three-and-a-half bathrooms, a swimming pool, a luxury spa, garage parking for one car, solar panels and air-conditioning throughout, as well as a place you can cook up deadly and addictive illegal drugs. “Home has inactive Meth lab and meth contamination,” the listing on property Web site Redfin says. “Home has not been cleared of contamination and will be transferred to the new buyer in its current state.” The San Jose home’s previous owner was Peter Karasev, the Los Angeles Times reported, who was arrested in March on suspicion of attacking electricity transformers. As well as the meth lab, police searching his house also found a weapons stockpile including guns and “homemade liquid explosive, multiple energetic homemade destructive devices,” police told a news conference at the time.
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