AUSTRALIA
Extreme heat in west
Parts of Western Australia were yesterday gripped by an “extreme” heat wave, raising the risk of bush fires in the vast state, the Bureau of Meteorology said. It had an “extreme heat wave warning” in place for the remote areas of Pilbara and Gascoyne, warning that temperatures could reach the high 40s°C over the weekend. In the Pilbara mining town of Paraburdoo, about 1,500km north of the state capital, Perth, a maximum temperature of 47°C was forecast, more than 6°C above the average January maximum, forecast data showed. It was 42.7°C there at 11am.
SOUTH KOREA
Chief charged in 2022 crush
Seoul’s chief of police has been charged with professional negligence over the deadly 2022 Halloween crush that killed nearly 160 people, prosecutors in the capital said. Kim Kwang-ho, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, was charged with professional negligence resulting in injury or death, Seoul’s Western District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement released on Friday. Kim “did not take necessary measures, such as deploying sufficient police forces and ensuring proper command and supervision” on the day of the crush, although he was able to “foresee potential dangers arising” from overcrowding in the nightlife area on Oct. 29, 2022, it said. Kim is the highest-ranking police official to face trial over the tragedy.
UNITED STATES
Microsoft e-mails hacked
Microsoft on Friday said that a Russian state-sponsored group hacked into its corporate systems on Friday last week and stole some e-mails and documents from staff accounts. The group was able to access “a very small percentage” of Microsoft corporate e-mail accounts, including members of its senior leadership team and employees in cybersecurity, legal and other divisions, the company said. The company said its probe into the breach indicated the hackers were initially targeting Microsoft to learn what the technology giant knew about their operations. The hackers used a “password spray attack” starting in November last year to breach a Microsoft platform, it said.
MEXICO
Cartel leader arrested
Authorities have arrested an alleged cartel leader over the kidnapping of four Americans, which resulted in the deaths of two of them, local media reported on Friday. The man, identified as one of the “main targets” of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, “was one of the key leaders of one of the criminal organizations with the greatest presence in the state of Tamaulipas,” the Mexican Secretariat of the Navy said in a statement on Thursday, without naming the suspect. Media on Friday identified the arrested man as Jose Alberto Garcia Vilano, also known as La Kena, linked to one of the most dangerous factions of the Gulf Cartel and the kidnapping of the four Americans in March last year.
UNITED STATES
Baldwin charged again
Alec Baldwin on Friday was charged again with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film Rust, reinstating a criminal case against the actor months after previous charges were dropped. Friday’s indictment by a New Mexico grand jury followed an independent forensic test concluding that Baldwin, 65, would have had to pull the trigger of a revolver he was using in a rehearsal for it to fire the live round that struck Hutchins in the chest and killed her.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
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