GERMANY
Hostage crisis closes airport
Hamburg airport remained closed yesterday, authorities said, as police dealt with a hostage situation they say likely involves a custody dispute. The airport closed for all takeoffs and landings on Saturday evening after police arrived in large numbers on the scene to deal with a man who drove through a barrier onto the grounds of the airport with a child. The car with the 35-year-old man and four-year-old girl was parked under a plane, a police spokesperson said. “The operation continues. Our negotiators are in contact with the person in the car,” the police posted yesterday on social media platform X.
UNITED STATES
Matthew Perry laid to rest
Actor Matthew Perry of the hit sitcom Friends was laid to rest at a Los Angeles cemetery on Friday during a private funeral attended by family and costars, US media reported. The 54-year-old, known for his role as Chandler Bing in Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004, was found dead on Oct. 28. “The service was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles near Warner Bros. Studios,” People reported, citing an unidentified source. It said the funeral service lasted about two hours. Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a cemetery in the Hollywood Hills, did not respond to a request for confirmation. Several other US media outlets, including celebrity news website TMZ, also reported that Perry was laid to rest at a low-key funeral attended by castmates Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow. “We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family,” his five costars said in a statement shortly after his death. Perry’s mother, father and stepfather also attended, according to the media reports. The cause of Perry’s death is not yet known. An initial postmortem examination was inconclusive and the results of toxicology tests have not yet been released. TMZ cited sources saying that no illicit drugs were found at his home, although several medications were discovered including antidepressants and anxiety medication.
UNITED STATES
Man rams nuclear plant
An Arkansas man has been arrested for trying to crash through the exit gates of a South Carolina nuclear plant, authorities said. Doyle Wayne Whisenhunt of Lockesburg, Arkansas, was taken into custody on Friday night at an abandoned home in Pickens County, South Carolina, and transferred to the Oconee County sheriff’s office, the sheriff’s office announced in a news release. Whisenhunt, 66, has been charged with one count each of attempted murder, malicious injury to personal property, and unlawful entry into an enclosed place relating to the Thursday night incident at the Oconee Nuclear Station. An arrest warrant says Whisenhunt accelerated his vehicle toward a Duke Energy security officer while on the grounds of the nuclear station in an attempt to cause harm or death. Authorities also say Whisenhunt caused damage to the gates and fencing outside the secured area of the facility. The incident at the nuclear plant near Seneca, South Carolina, happened about an hour after security asked the same car to leave when it tried to enter, authorities said. A pop-up security barrier stopped the car with an Arkansas license plate at the facility at about 8pm Thursday. The driver backed up and tried to drive down a dirt road as security tried to block them in. The driver tried to hit the guards, then drove through a fence and off the nuclear plant property, authorities said. None of the security staff was injured, Duke Energy said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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