FRANCE
No-show stops rape trial
The trial of a man accused of recruiting strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife was yesterday suspended after he failed to show up in court due to ill health. The presiding judge had adjourned the trial of Dominique Pelicot until yesterday after the accused was excused from attending proceedings for most of last week because of his deteriorating health. However, his lawyer said that Pelicot, 71, was still not well enough to attend. “He will not be there today,” Beatrice Zavarro said, unless “he is taken by force” from his cell. She said Pelicot was suffering from “a clot in the bladder” and the beginning of a kidney infection. “I have been advised that Mr Pelicot has refused his extraction” from his cell, presiding judge Roger Arata said.
BOTSWANA
1,094-carat diamond found
Lucara Diamond Corp has recovered another mammoth diamond from a local mine, its second major find in a month. The latest gem weighed 1,094 carats and was found at the Karowe mine, Lucara said in a statement. While it is smaller than the 2,942-carat stone discovered at the same site last month, it is still about a third the size of the biggest-ever found, the Cullinan Diamond of South Africa. Lucara’s Karowe project is famous for giant stones, and the company’s shares jumped more than a third last month when the initial mammoth finding was announced. CEO William Lamb said the latest discovery further validated an expansion of the site’s underground capacity, which would extend the life of the project to at least 2040.
UNITED STATES
Subway shooting injures 4
Four people were wounded at a Brooklyn subway station on Sunday when police officers shot at a man threatening them with a knife, the authorities said. The people hit by police gunfire included the man with the blade, one of the officers and two innocent bystanders. The bloody confrontation began when two officers confronted a man who had entered the station without paying his fare, officials said. One of the bystanders, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition. The man suspected of evading his fare, 37, was shot several times, but was in stable condition. A 26-year-old woman suffered a graze wound. The wounded police officer had a bullet enter his torso under his armpit and lodge in his back, but was also expected to recover. New York City Police Department Interim Police Commissioner Thomas Donlan promised a thorough investigation into the shooting. “But right now, we are grateful that our officer will be OK,” he told reporters.
HUNGARY
Short-term rentals banned
Residents of Budapest’s sixth district have narrowly voted to ban short-term rentals from 2026 in a decision that could have wider ramifications for the housing market in one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations. Eurostat figures show almost 719 million guest nights spent in the EU were booked via online platforms Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor last year, with Paris leading EU capitals with more than 19 million guest nights. Within central Europe, Budapest was the most popular for short-term stays, with 6.7 million guest nights. Results published on the Budapest district’s Web site early yesterday showed 54 percent of voters backing the ban with 20.52 percent turnout, which the district said was well above levels seen at other local initiatives. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government is mulling regulation on short-term rentals, which it blames for a housing shortage and high prices.
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
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
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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