UNITED KINGDOM
Actress’ brother charged
The brother of an actress who starred in popular British soap opera was on Saturday charged with her murder, police said, four days after her headless body was found in a London canal. Tony McCluskie, 35, was charged with killing his 29-year-old sister, Gemma McCluskie, who disappeared last week, Scotland Yard said in a statement, adding that he would appear in court today. The actress’s limbless and headless torso was found on Tuesday when a member of the public reported a suspicious object floating close to a market in east London, not far from the street where she and her brother lived. Gemma McCluskie played Kerry Skinner in 2001 in the BBC TV soap EastEnders about the residents of a working-class district of east London.
FRANCE
Moebius dies at 73
French comic-book artist Jean Giraud, alias “Moebius,” best known for his gritty Wild West character Blueberry, has died at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer, according to his publisher. Giraud also ventured into cinema, working with director Ridley Scott on the visual effects for Alien and the computer-effects-driven movie Tron. His death was confirmed by publishing house Dargaud late on Saturday, which said the comic-book world had lost “one of its greatest masters.” Author Paulo Coelho paid tribute to Giraud in a blog post, saying he had the “honor” to work with him on an illustrated edition of his 1988 novel The Alchemist. Giraud, who also crafted science-fiction epics under the pen name “Moebius,” gained cult status in the European comics world after a 50-year career that saw his anti-hero Mike Blueberry endure almost as long as Herge’s Tintin.
CONGO
State funeral for victims
Morgue workers hurried to finish washing the bodies of hundreds of people killed in last week’s explosion at a military base ahead of their state funeral yesterday — the single largest loss of life in this Central African nation. At least 246 people were killed when an arms depot inside a military barracks went up in flames, setting off a lethal downpour of grenades, mortars and shells. The detonation flattened buildings — including churches, schools, dormitories and businesses — crushing scores of people. Only 168 of the bodies have been identified so far, according to morgue records. The government has ordered them to be laid to rest in identical coffins in order to convey the national character of the loss. Overnight, families camped out in front of the morgue, waiting for the name of their relative to be read on the outdoor speaker. They held shopping bags with the new clothes they had bought to dress their loves ones — dinner jackets or suits for the men, and wedding dresses for the women and girls, in keeping with local funeral tradition.
PAKISTAN
Suicide attack kills 13
A suicide bomber attacked a funeral attended by an anti-Taliban politician yesterday, killing at least 13 mourners and wounding 30 others, police said. The politician, Khush Dil Khan, escaped unhurt in the blast on the outskirts of Peshawar, the main city in the northwest. Islamist militants are fighting a vicious war against Pakistani security forces in and around Peshawar, which lies close to border regions with Afghanistan where extremists hold sway.
MEXICO
Human remains found
Authorities have discovered the remains of 167 people in a cave in the south of the country and forensic experts believe the remains to be at least 50 years old, according to a statement from Chiapas State prosecutors. The statement released on Saturday said the remains were found on Friday on the Nuevo Ojo de Agua ranch, in an area frequently used by Central American migrants traveling north. The statement said there were no visible signs of violence on the remains, which “break easily.” The remains were discovered stacked atop each other in the cave, said a prosecutor’s office employee who was not authorized to release information and asked not to be identified. The remains have been moved to the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez for examination, the employee said. Mass graves have been found in the past two years, mainly in northern regions, containing the bodies of dozens of migrants and others allegedly killed by drug cartels.
UNITED STATES
Governator’s son injured
The 18-year-old son of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver says he has been treated for injuries after getting in “a little ski accident” in Idaho. Patrick Schwarzenegger tweeted on Saturday that he received stitches after the accident and thanked doctors who he said cared for him in Sun Valley. He also provided a link to a photograph he posted to the social networking application Instagram, showing a deep cut on his lower back. He did not provide details on how he received the injury. A request for further details late on Saturday from Shriver’s spokesman was not immediately returned.
PERU
Naked cyclists protest
About 300 nude cyclists rode through Lima to bring attention to safety conditions and demand measures protecting cyclists on Saturday. Event organizer Octavio Zegarra said the protesters took to their bicycles nude to show that “this is our body. With this we go out in the streets. We do not have a car to protect us.” Zegarra asked others to “please respect us.” Official statistics show that 2,830 people died in traffic accidents nationwide last year.
UNITED STATES
Symphony marred by fight
It was an unusual backdrop for a fistfight: Maestro Riccardo Muti was nearly through the second movement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 at the normally staid Chicago Symphony Orchestra when two patrons got into a fistfight. Concert-goers at Orchestra Hall were all the more stunned on Thursday because the two men were fighting in one of the boxes where the well-to-do normally sit in decorous self-restraint. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Saturday that the ruckus began when a man in his 30s started punching a 67-year-old man in one of the boxes. “We heard a rather loud thump,” said Steve Robinson, general manager of Chicago’s classical and folk music station 98.7 WFMT, who was at the performance, but did not see the fracas. “It wasn’t so loud that everyone jumped up and ran for the exits,” he added. Police said the fight was the result of an argument over seats. The older man had a cut on his forehead; the other left before the officers arrived. All the while, the concert went on, though patrons said music director Muti gave the two men a sharp, irritated look — one person called it “dagger eyes” — before continuing with the third movement.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema