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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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