UNITED STATES
Kennedy reveals suspicion
Independent US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr believed he might have been attacked by a worm that ate part of his brain and then died inside his head, the media reported on Wednesday. Kennedy, 70, made the claim in a 2012 deposition as part of his divorce from his second wife, according to the New York Times, which said the scion of the storied political clan reported severe memory loss and mental fog. A New York surgeon who reviewed his brain scans told Kennedy his health issues could have been “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” he reportedly told attorneys. AFP has not independently reviewed the deposition.
UNITED STATES
Apple ad causes backlash
An ad for the new iPad Pro on Wednesday caused an uproar for showing an industrial-sized hydraulic press crushing objects linked to human creativity — such as a record player and trumpet — into a sleek tablet. Social media users immediately criticized the ad, which was posted on X by Apple CEO Tim Cook, as painfully tone-deaf at a time when the creative community is worried about its future with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence. “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” actor Hugh Grant wrote on X. Set to the song All I Ever Need is You by Sonny and Cher, the one-minute ad titled Crush sees the pile of creative artifacts, also including a piano and paint cans, explode under the pressure of Apple’s press. “I’m not sure ‘wanton destruction of all the good and beautiful things in this world’ was really the vibe you were trying for,” X user Judd Baroff wrote.
JAPAN
Rat parts found in bread
More than 100,000 packets of sliced bread have been recalled after parts of a black rat’s body were discovered inside two of them, the manufacturer said on Wednesday. Food recalls are rare in Japan, a country with famously high standards of sanitation, and Pasco Shikishima Corp said it was investigating how the rodent remains had crept into its products. The company said it was so far unaware of anyone falling sick after eating its processed white chojuku bread, long a staple of Japanese breakfast tables. About 104,000 packs of the bread have been recalled in mainland Japan, from Tokyo to the northern Aomori region. “We would like to apologize deeply for causing trouble to our customers and clients,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, Pasco confirmed that parts of a black rat had contaminated the two packs.
VIETNAM
Senior official arrested
Police have arrested a senior official involved in talks with international organizations on labor reforms, state media said yesterday, adding that the action was linked to disclosure of classified information. The detention of Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Legal Affairs Department Director Nguyen Van Binh follows months of arrests of prominent experts and activists, in what some diplomats see as a further crackdown on civil society amid a major reshuffle of top political leaders in the communist-ruled country. Binh, 51, was charged with overseeing reforms to labor law on which he worked closely with the International Labour Organization, the ministry said on its Web site. Binh was detained on charges of intentionally revealing state secrets, the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper 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
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
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,
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
RSS