■UNITED KINGDOM
Vets mark Battle of Britain
Nineteen veterans of the Battle of Britain joined on Sunday a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the battle with Germany. About 5,000 people, including Prince Michael of Kent and Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, the senior commander of the Royal Air Force (RAF), converged at the Battle of Britain memorial at Capel-le-Ferne near the English Channel port of Dover. “We pay tribute each July to the men of RAF Fighter Command — ‘The Few’ — who were at the forefront of preventing a possible German invasion, as well as to the many men and women who supported them and helped to ensure that we all live in freedom today,” said Group Captain Patrick Tootal, secretary of the Memorial Trust. “The few” recalls the tribute paid by wartime prime minister Winston Churchill: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”
■UNITED STATES
Srebrenica remembered
US President Barack Obama on Sunday described the Srebrenica massacre as a “stain on our collective conscience” and urged governments to redouble their efforts to track down key suspect Ratko Mladic. “On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica, and on behalf of the United States, I join my voice with those who are gathered to mourn a great loss and to reflect on an unimaginable tragedy,” Obama said in a statement issued in Washington, but also read out a graveyard ceremony near Srebrenica. “Justice must include a full accounting of the crimes that occurred, full identification and return of all those who were lost, and prosecution and punishment of those who carried out the genocide. This includes Ratko Mladic, who presided over the killings and remains at large.” Mladic is accused of masterminding the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 people dead and the July 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
■ITALY
Qaddafi son ordered to pay
An Italian judge has ordered Saadi Qaddafi, the third son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, to pay a 392,000 euro (US$494,000) hotel bill he failed to settle. Saadi Qaddafi was taken to court by the Grand Hotel Excelsior in Rapallo, near Portofino, after staying for about 40 days in early 2008, accompanied by secretaries, bodyguards, a personal trainer, a driver and a dog trainer. The party left without paying the bill, but did leave a black sports utility vehicle, which is still parked at the hotel, local media reported. At the time, Qaddafi was winding up his career as a professional soccer play in Italy.
■GERMANY
Fifty-two trapped in trains
A grueling heat wave shut down the air conditioning in three high-tech trains, leaving dozens of passengers near collapse trapped in temperatures of up to 50°C, authorities said on Sunday. At least 52 people needed medical treatment and about 1,000 people had to switch trains, according to the national railway system, Deutsche Bahn. All three modern ICE trains — whose windows do not open — were headed west from Berlin on Saturday, Deutsche Bahn spokesman Juergen Kornmann said. While two lost their air conditioning fairly close to a station and could be emptied quickly, a third heated up some distance before reaching the city of Bielefeld. Kornmann said eight people suffering from heat exhaustion needed to be hospitalized in Bielefeld and another 44 needed medical treatment.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.