RUSSIA
Security forces storm prison
Security forces yesterday stormed a detention center in the southern region of Rostov, killing inmates who had taken two members of staff hostage, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. The hostages at the pretrial detention center were uninjured, RIA Novosti said, citing the Federal Penitentiary Service. It said that the hostage takers had been “liquidated,” with other local news outlets reporting that at least some of the prisoners had been killed. Earlier, state news agency TASS, citing unnamed sources, said that six hostage takers were armed with a penknife, a rubber baton and a fire axe. The prisoners include men accused of links to the Islamic State group, it said.
UNITED STATES
Nine injured in shooting
Nine people were on Saturday injured, including two young children and their mother, after a shooter opened fire at a splash pad in a Detroit suburb where families gathered to escape the summer heat. Law enforcement tracked a suspect to a home, where the man, whose name was not released, died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said. An eight-year-old boy was shot in the head and in critical condition on Saturday night, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard told a news conference. The boy’s mother also was in critical condition after being wounded in the abdomen and leg, and his four-year-old brother was in stable condition with a leg wound. The other six victims, all 30 or older, were in stable condition, Bouchard said. The shooting, which occurred just after 5pm at a city park, appeared to be random, with the attacker walking to the splash pad and firing as many as 28 times, stopping multiple times to reload, he said. “In terms of the ‘why,’ I don’t know,” he said of the shooter’s motive.
UNITED KINGDOM
Cow-ramming sparks outrage
The interior minister on Saturday demanded an “urgent explanation” after police officers were filmed ramming a runaway cow with their car. The Surrey Police force said it had referred itself to the police ethics watchdog after officers on Friday evening responded to reports of a loose cow “running at members of the public” in Staines-upon-Thames. It said officers spent several hours trying to catch the animal, and eventually “a decision was made to stop it using a police car.” Footage published on social media showed a cow running in a residential road being hit by a police car, getting up and then being hit again. “I can think of no reasonable need for this action. I’ve asked for a full, urgent explanation for this. It appears to be unnecessarily heavy handed,” Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly wrote on X. The footage drew anger in animal-loving Britain. “What sort of monster rams a calf?” BBC nature presenter Chris Packham wrote on X.
UNITED STATES
Trump confuses doctor
Former president Donald Trump on Saturday challenged 81-year-old US President Joe Biden to take a cognitive test, but then confused the name of the doctor who performed his own assessment. Trump extolled his powers of mental recall in a speech in Detroit, challenging Biden to take the same exam he says he underwent in 2018 with then-White House physician Ronny Jackson. However, he immediately flubbed the name of the former official, who is now one of his loyal supporters in Congress. “Doc Ronny Johnson,” said Trump, who turned 78 on Friday. “Does everyone know Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas?” he continued. “He said I was the healthiest president, he feels, in history, so I liked him very much.”
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
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
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
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
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