NEW ZEALAND
Death linked to ‘suicide kit’
Coroner Alexandra Cunninghame has linked a fifth death to a “suicide kit” allegedly sold online by a former Canadian chef, findings released yesterday showed. Cunninghame found that a 25-year-old killed herself in an Auckland hotel in April 2022 after receiving an item ordered from an online business linked to Canadian Kenneth Law. The coroner was unable to confirm whether the package actually contained the substance used in her suicide, but said that the “drug is heavily restricted, and therefore not easily obtainable, in New Zealand.” Cunninghame has previously connected the deaths of three students and a personal trainer who took their own lives in 2022 and last year to purchases from a Web site associated with Law. Police in Canada say that the former chef sent as many as 1,200 “suicide kits” to people in more than 40 countries between 2020 and his arrest last year.
Photo: Reuters
SOUTH KOREA
Medalist to make movie
Olympic pistol shooter Kim Ye-ji, whose skill and nonchalance won the Internet at the Paris Games, has landed her first acting role — as an assassin. The 32-year-old took silver in the women’s 10m air pistol in July and her ultra-calm demeanor, combined with her wire-rimmed shooting glasses and baseball cap, turned her into a worldwide online sensation. “She should be cast in an action movie. No acting required!” X owner Elon Musk wrote on the social media platform at the time. Now she is to play an assassin in Crush, a spinoff short-form series of the global film project Asia, a spokesperson for Seoul-based entertainment firm Asia Lab said yesterday.
KENYA
Three abducted men freed
Three people at the heart of an abduction case have been freed, rights groups said yesterday, accusing security forces of keeping Bob Njagi, Aslam Longton and his brother Jamil Longton captive for weeks after they took part in protests against the government. The three were allegedly abducted by men identifying themselves as police on Aug. 19 in Kitengela. “Our partners have confirmed their release,” Cornelius Oduor of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission said. “We strongly believe that they were taken by security agents of Kenya.” A court in Nairobi had held the acting police chief, Gilbert Masengeli, in contempt for failing to appear to answer questions about the disappearance of the three men. He was given until yesterday to appear in court to avoid a prison sentence. “We believe [the men’s release] was intended to provide immediate grounds for [Masengeli] to challenge his conviction,” Oduor said.
BRAZIL
Daylight saving may return
Energy authorities have approved bringing back daylight saving time, a senior official said on Thursday. Before it goes into effect, reinstating daylight savings time would need to be backed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. A drought in Brazil has affected some of the country’s largest hydroelectric plants, forcing a shift to more fuel imports and driving up power bills. By moving clocks forward an hour from November to February, daylight saving time would make use of more daylight hours and ease pressure on peak power consumption in the late afternoon. Then-president Jair Bolsonaro abolished daylight savings in 2019, saying that it was no longer benefiting the power sector.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home