AFGHANISTAN
Bomb strikes German convoy
A suicide car bomber struck a German military convoy in Kunduz yesterday, detonating explosives that killed three Afghan civilians and overturned at least one armored vehicle, officials and witnesses said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomber blew his vehicle up shortly before 10am on a busy road on the edge of Kunduz city, near the airport. Three civilians were killed and 11 were wounded in the blast, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
PHILIPPINES
Bomb in bar wounds four
An improvised bomb has exploded at a bar in the restive southern Mindanao region, wounding four people, police said yesterday. Witnesses saw a man acting suspiciously and leaving quickly before the bomb exploded at the Starlight Videoke bar in Tacurong city on Saturday evening, national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Agrimero Cruz said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, although Muslim separatist rebels and other armed gangs are known to operate in the area. The explosion came just days after the US Department of State warned of the risk of terrorist attacks in in parts of Mindanao, as well as in Manila.
CHINA
Flooding affects 2.6 million
More than 2 million people have been displaced or otherwise affected by flooding in Zhejiang Province. Xinhua news agency says torrential rains have left huge areas of the relatively wealthy province underwater, with 171,000 hectares of farmland inundated. Xinhua reported yesterday that almost 1,000 businesses have been forced to suspend operations and 2.6 million people have had their lives disrupted. Direct financial damages were estimated at almost 5 billion yuan (US$772 million).
POLAND
Plane crashes at airshow
A small plane lost control and plunged into a river on Saturday as it performed stunts at an air show. The pilot, the only person on board, was killed. The accident occurred in Plock as people gathered by the Vistula River for a picnic and the air show. The news station TVN24 broadcast images of the small plane doing aerobatics when it began spewing out plumes of dark smoke and then plunged into the water. Rescue workers pulled the pilot from the wreckage and tried to resuscitate him before sending him to a hospital. Several hours later, a hospital official said the pilot, Marek Szufa, died. The director of the Air Club of Mazovia that organized the show, Slawomir Adamkowski, said the cause of the crash was under investigation.
IRAN
Camp needs monitors: group
A leader of an exiled opposition group says the UN must monitor its camp in Iraq after a deadly April attack by the Iraqi army. Maryam Rajavi of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran told thousands of followers at a gathering on Saturday outside Paris that UN monitors in Camp Ashraf is the most expedient short-term way to protect the 3,400 people living there. The camp was installed under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and once used as a base to battle the clerical regime across the border in Iran. The US has labeled the Mujahedeen a terrorist group, and Rajavi says Washington is responsible for the situation in Ashraf because it has “shackled the main force for change in Iran.” An Iraqi army attack on the enclave killed up to 35 people and injured hundreds.
UNITED STATES
Clarence Clemons dies
A spokeswoman for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band says saxophone player Clarence Clemons has died in Florida at age 69. Spokeswoman Marilyn Laverty confirmed the death on Saturday. Clemons was one of the key influences in Springsteen’s life and music. He was hospitalized about a week ago after suffering a stroke at his home in Florida. Known as the Big Man for his imposing 1.83m, 122.47kg frame, Clemons spent much of his life with “The Boss” and his solos became a signature sound for the E Street Band on many songs. Springsteen, in a statement on his Web site, expressed “overwhelming sadness” at Clemons’s passing. “He was my great friend, my partner,” Springsteen said. “He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years.”
MEXICO
Eleven killed in shootout
Eleven suspected crime syndicate gunmen were killed in a shootout with soldiers along a highway in the east of the country, a senior official said on Saturday. “During the encounter 11 heavily armed criminals were killed” and another eight arrested, Veracruz State Governor Javier Duarte told reporters. The gunfire erupted when soldiers conducting an operation against a suspected criminal cell were confronted by armed men in a group of vehicles.
CANADA
Anti-fracking protest held
About 3,000 people marched on Saturday in Montreal to call for an end in Quebec to a technique known as “fracking” to get at natural gas reserves which faces strong opposition from environmental groups. The demonstrators marched through downtown Montreal, chanting slogans against drilling. “Quebec should take a turn for renewable energy, especially new energy sources which are green,” said Amir Khadir, a member of the provincial assembly who came on bicycle to join the protest. The Quebec Association to Combat Air Pollution, which organized the protest, said a decision by Quebec authorities to study the issue was insufficient, because eight of the 11 members of a study panel have ties to the oil and gas industries. Hydraulic fracturing involves forcing chemicals deep into a well to dislodge natural gas from shale thousands of feet below the surface. Backers say the vast reserves in North America could ease dependence on imported energy. However, some argue that the method risks contaminating underground water sources. In Quebec, large sources of shale gas are believed to be located in the St. Lawrence valley, and Quebec authorities are studying the potential environmental impact of drilling in the area.
COLOMBIA
Biggest emerald on show
A massive uncut emerald on exhibit in Bogota is being touted by its owners as the biggest in the world, officials said on Saturday. The 11,000 karat raw green gem weighs in at 2.27kg and is on show in the capital 12 years after it was mined in Muzo, in Boyaca Province. “It is priceless,” Santiago Soto, spokesman for the Minergemas gem industry trade fair being held in Bogota, said of the stone owned by the firm Coexminas. No more than 15 people at a time are allowed to view the stone, with five guards looking on. The nation produces 55 percent of the world’s emeralds, exporting them for about US$200 million a year.
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.