NORTH KOREA
Kim’s sister vows response
The powerful sister of leader Kim Jong-un yesterday slammed South Korean “scum” for launching anti-regime propaganda leaflets across the border using balloons, warning they would pay “a very high price.” Since late May, Pyongyang has floated numerous balloons carrying trash toward South Korea, saying they were a tit-for-tat action against South Korean leaflets. In a statement carried by state media, Kim Yo-jong said that “dirty leaflets and things of [the South Korean] scum” were found again yesterday morning. “We have fully introduced our countermeasure in such situation. The [South Korean] clans will be tired from suffering a bitter embarrassment and must be ready for paying a very high price for their dirty play,” she said.
FRANCE
Four killed in shooting
Four people, including the shooter, died late on Saturday after a man opened fire on a birthday party in a village, authorities said. The man approached a neighboring house where a 20-year-old was celebrating his birthday with his family in Espinasse-Vozelle. He fired shots at the party guests, killing three of them, and then himself, the local prefecture said. The young man celebrating his birthday and his father were both killed. Police were still piecing together the “how and the why” of the attack, authorities said. The man appears to have shot at passing motorists before the deadly assault.
UNITED KINGDOM
Man held after remains found
Police on Saturday said they have arrested a man in connection with the deaths of two men whose remains were found in two suitcases in southwest England. The Metropolitan Police said armed officers detained a 34-year-old suspect at a train station in Bristol early on Saturday. Police also said more human remains were found at an address in Shepherd’s Bush the previous day, believed to be connected to those found in the suitcases dumped near the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol on Wednesday.
UNITED STATES
Sex therapist Dr Ruth dies
Ruth Westheimer, the wildly successful sex therapist who became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1980s with her bluntly delivered advice on how to spice up the bedroom, has died, US media reported on Saturday. She was 96. People magazine, quoting her publicist and sometime coauthor Pierre Lehu, said she died on Friday. It gave no cause of death, but other reports said she died at home in New York with family members present. The German-born Westheimer, who lost both of her parents in the Holocaust, reached fame in her 50s when she began hosting a pioneering radio show in New York City called Sexually Speaking. Known simply as Dr Ruth, she capitalized on her late-in-life fame, going on to host a television show, appear in many films and coach millions of fans in dozens of books about how to have a more satisfying sex life.
UNITED STATES
Dolphins freed in stranding
Rescuers who helped free more than 100 dolphins from the Cape Cod shoreline in Massachusetts said they have confirmed that the mass stranding that began on June 28 was the largest involving dolphins in US history. The International Fund for Animal Welfare, which helped lead the rescue, said that a final review of data and aerial imagery this week revealed that a total of 146 dolphins were involved in the stranding. The group estimated that 102 dolphins survived the multiday event.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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