UNITED STATES
Mine accident probed
Investigators on Friday were trying to figure out what led to an elevator accident inside a former Colorado gold mine that killed a tour guide, injured four others and left a separate group of 12 people trapped for six hours at the bottom of the tourist attraction 305m beneath the surface. The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine on Thursday in the mountains near Colorado Springs, when at about 152m down, the person operating the elevator from the surface “felt something strange” and stopped it, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said. The elevator was still operable, and those on board were brought back up within 20 minutes, he said, adding that the elevator’s door was damaged. The exact circumstances of the death of Patrick Weier, 46, were not disclosed, but the sheriff said he died because of the elevator’s mechanical issue.
FRANCE
Paris adopts anti-sexism law
Filmmakers looking to shoot on the iconic streets of Paris would have to promise to fight sexism, discrimination and sexual violence on set under a regulation adopted on Friday by city lawmakers. The regulation, due to take effect on Jan. 1 next year, requires production companies seeking a permit to film in the capital to sign a charter pledging to promote gender balance on set, train crews against sexism and fight gender discrimination and violence. Companies would also have to put special measures in place to protect those involved in shooting sex scenes — a side of the industry that has been transformed since the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017.
UNITED KINGDOM
Creepy parent killer jailed
A woman who murdered her parents and then lived for four years alongside their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home was on Friday sentenced to life imprisonment and told she would not be eligible for parole for 36 years. Virginia McCullough, who spent her parents’ money and went to great lengths to cover her tracks with family and friends through a web of lies, had pleaded guilty to murdering her parents in June 2019 at a previous hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court in southeast England. Judge Jeremy Johnson said at the sentencing hearing that McCullough’s actions represented a “gross violation of the trust that should exist between parents and their children.” In September last year, McCullough, 36, admitted to poisoning her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication that she crushed and put into his alcoholic drinks and that a day later she beat her 71-year-old mother Lois McCullough with a hammer and fatally stabbed her.
UNITED STATES
Kayak turtle smuggler caught
A woman from Hong Kong on Friday pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle 29 eastern box turtles, a protected species, across Vermont’s Lake Wallace into Canada by kayak. Wan Yee Ng, 41, was arrested on the morning of June 28 at an Airbnb in Canaan as she was about to get into an inflatable kayak with a duffle bag, according to a Border Patrol agent’s affidavit filed in federal court. Royal Canadian Mounted Police had notified agents that two other people, including a man who was believed to be her husband, had started to paddle an inflatable watercraft from the Canadian side toward the US, court documents showed. The agents found 29 live eastern box turtles individually wrapped in socks in her duffle bag, the affidavit states. The turtles are known to be sold on the Chinese black market for US$1,000 each, it said.
‘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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