VIETNAM
To Lam elected president
The National Assembly elected Minister of Public Security To Lam as the new president, the legislature said yesterday. Lam, 66, was deputy head of the Communist Party’s anti-corruption committee before taking on the second-most important position in the nation’s political hierarchy. He becomes Vietnam’s third president in less than two years after his two immediate predecessors resigned for “violations” that were possibly detected by the ministry that Lam oversaw. “This is a great honor and responsibility, also an opportunity for me,” Lam said in a speech after taking his oath at the National Assembly.
ITALY
Gerard Depardieu accused
A well-known Italian paparazzi photographer on Tuesday accused French film star Gerard Depardieu of punching him in Rome, media reported, with the actor’s lawyer saying he had been defending a companion. Daily Il Messaggero quoted the photographer Rino Barillari as saying the 75-year-old actor punched him three times in the face when he tried to photograph the star. Barillari, 79, dubbed the “king of paparazzi,” told the paper he approached the actor and a woman at Harry’s Bar on the chic Via Veneto on Tuesday afternoon. “Mamma mia, he is fat. He punched me three times in the face,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “First I’m going to hospital, then I’m going to deal with him. I’m going to file a complaint to the police.” He said the woman, Depardieu’s partner Magda Vavrusova, initially tried to block him from taking photographs. In a statement released later, the couple’s lawyer Delphine Meillet cited Vavrusova as saying the photographer had pushed her violently and touched her chest with his arm.
UNITED STATES
Biopic angers Trump
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign called The Apprentice, a film about the former president in the 1980s, “pure fiction” and vowed legal action following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. However, director Ali Abbasi is offering to privately screen the film for Trump. Following its premiere on Monday in Cannes, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that the Trump team would file a lawsuit “to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers.” “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked,” Cheung said. The central relationship of the movie is between Trump and Roy Cohn, the defense attorney who was chief counsel to former senator Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s Senate investigations of suspected communists. Asked about the Trump campaign’s statement on Tuesday in Cannes, Abbasi told reporters: “Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people — they don’t talk about his success rate though, you know?” However, Abbasi at the film’s festival news conference offered to screen The Apprentice for Trump and talk it over.
UNITED STATES
Actor Perry’s death probed
Police on Tuesday said they are investigating the ketamine overdose death of Friends actor Matthew Perry, who died at his luxury Los Angeles home last year. Perry was found unresponsive in his pool at the age of 54, sparking a global outpouring of grief from fans and colleagues. An autopsy found the cause of his death was “the acute effects of ketamine,” a controlled drug which the recovering addict was understood to be taking as part of supervised therapy. Just how the actor obtained the drug is now the subject of a legal investigation.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
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