AUSTRALIA
Rapper Yung Filly charged
A British YouTuber and rapper known as Yung Filly has been charged with raping and choking a woman in a hotel room following a performance. The 29-year-old, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, on Thursday was freed on bail after a court appearance in Perth on several charges, with police alleging his crimes were committed on Sept. 28. Barrientos was arrested in Brisbane on Tuesday, a police statement said. The Colombia-born entertainer was accused of assaulting a woman in her 20s in a hotel room after he had performed in a Perth nightclub. He is charged with four counts of rape, three counts of assault causing bodily harm and one count of impeding the woman’s normal breathing or circulation by applying pressure to her neck, police said.
Photo: AP
NEW ZEALAND
Minister defends captain
Minister for Defence Judith Collins on Thursday said that online remarks by “vile ... misogynistic ... armchair admirals” about the captain of a navy ship that ran aground, caught fire and sank off the coast of Samoa were false. “Seriously, it’s 2024,” Collins told reporters. “What the hell’s going on here?” After days of comments on social media directed at the sex of Commander Yvonne Gray, Collins urged the public to “be better.” Female members of the military had also faced verbal abuse in the street in New Zealand since the ship — one of nine in the country’s navy — was lost on Sunday, Collins said. All 75 people on board evacuated to safety after the vessel ran aground on the reef it was surveying off Upolu, Samoa’s most populous island. The cause of the incident is not known. “The one thing that we already know did not cause it is the gender of the ship’s captain, a woman with 30 years’ naval experience who on the night made the call to get her people to safety,” Collins said. One of the posters was a truck driver from Melbourne, Australia, she added. “I think that he should keep his comments to people who drive trucks rather than people who drive ships,” Collins said.
Photo: AP
UNITED STATES
Ethel Kennedy dies
Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated, and remained dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy for decades thereafter, died on Thursday, her family said. She was 96. “It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III wrote on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week. Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the family statement said. President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.” The Kennedy matriarch, mother to Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr, David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included former president John F. Kennedy. She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Her brother-in-law John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, less than five years earlier.
‘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
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
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,
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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