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.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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