SWAZILAND
Judge in fight over dog
A high court judge has become entangled in battle over custody of a dachshund puppy, which he is accused of dognapping from a neighbor using a falsified court order. Judge Jacobus Annandale allegedly sent police officers with a fake court order to nab the long-bodied pup a few days after selling it. Annandale argues that his neighbor Bhekiwe Dlamini abused the dog and is seeking an interdict to keep it. According to court papers seen on Friday, Annandale alleges Dlamini left the canine to sleep in the cold, infested with flies. Dlamini refused to sell the dog back at double the US$240 asking price, and says the alleged abuse did not concern the judge. A judge last week granted an interim interdict against the neighbor so that a veterinarian can examine the puppy.
FRANCE
‘Psy’ crashes Cannes
A man pretending to be South Korean rapper Psy talked his way into glitzy parties at the Cannes film festival and posed with fans until he was spotted drinking champagne by the real Psy’s manager. Psy, in Singapore on Thursday night to perform at the inaugural Social Star awards, said that Scooter Braun spotted the impostor, took a photograph and sent it to the musician. “He sent it to me, and I tweeted that, like, five, six hours ago, so everybody in France, they know,” Psy told Reuters television at the Singapore ceremony. “Real Psy is here.” Psy became a global sensation last year when the video for his song Gangnam Style went viral. It became the first video to receive more than 1 billion hits on video sharing Web site YouTube.
ZANBIA
Man survives python attack
A truck driver who was forced to kick, bite and stab his way from the clutches of a giant python, said on Friday he was lucky to be alive. Kelvin Katoka, 25, unknowingly ran into the giant snake while driving his excavator in the bush at a copper mine in the northwest. “Within no time, the python was all over my body and it then threw me on the ground,” he said by telephone from his hospital bed, where he has been recovering for nearly a month. Rock pythons are Africa’s largest snake and can grow up to 7m long. Katoka managed to bite the python as it coiled around him and held on in a “long struggle.” “It then clicked to my mind that I had a small knife in my work suit pocket and quickly, I rushed for it,” he said. “I stabbed it in the sides of its body and slowly it started loosening itself, but by then, I had become weak.” The snake once again wrapped itself around his body and “started to apply saliva all over my face in readiness to swallow me,” he said. Two workmates came to where he had been working in Mwininlunga. They killed the python, carried Katoka away and took him to hospital.
SPAIN
Pilot survives plane crash
Officials say the pilot of a small plane carrying three passengers is the only person to survive a crash on the island of Mallorca. The Cessna 172 single-engine plane took off from the island’s Son Bonet de Marratxi airfield just after 5pm on Friday, failed to gain altitude and crashed into a nearby field, a regional Interior Ministry spokesman said. Two men and a woman, all Spanish nationals, died in the accident and the pilot was rescued from the flaming wreckage, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Television images on state broadcaster TVE showed firefighters battling flames and rescuing the badly injured pilot.
UNITED STATES
Teen takes model to prom
A Southern California teenager turned heads at his prom when he showed up with a Danish model as his date. Sports Illustrated model Nina Agdal agreed to step in as Jake Davidson’s date for the traditional high-school dance on Thursday night after he was turned down by supermodel Kate Upton. The teenager appeared in a YouTube video that was viewed more than 2.5 million times asking Upton to be his date. After Upton declined because of a scheduling conflict, Agdal volunteered to go, saying she never got to attend her own prom. The Danish model appears as the bikini-clad sunbather in a Carl’s Jr ad. Davidson told the Los Angeles Daily News he had an incredible night and said Agdal was down to earth.
UNITED STATES
Ohio hero refuses burgers
A man who put aside his McDonald’s hamburger to help rescue three women held captive in an Ohio house said he is not endorsing a group of restaurants offering him free burgers for life. The restaurant where Charles Ramsey worked as a dishwasher initially created a burger named in his honor, then more than a dozen area eateries decided a larger tribute was due. Ramsey said in a written statement released through his attorney on Friday that he does not endorse the northeast Ohio restaurants that are offering burgers bearing his name or promoting a lifetime of free burgers for him. The restaurant group told the Plain Dealer newspaper it will drop the Ramsey burger from the menu and said it is saddened he is not taking the offer in the spirit intended.
UNITED STATES
Actress in court over bong
Actress Amanda Bynes appeared in court on Friday and denied charges of possessing marijuana and tossing a bong out of the window of her 36th-floor Manhattan apartment. The former Nickelodeon child star was released on her own recognizance after spending a night in jail after her arrest on Thursday. She was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, reckless endangerment and attempted tampering with physical evidence, according to court documents. All the alleged offenses are classified as misdemeanors rather than felonies. Her attorney at the hearing denied the charges and accused police of entering the actress’ apartment illegally. The actress, 27, who has had several brushes with the law in the past year and is on probation for driving on a suspended license in California, was ordered to return to court on July 9. New York police were called to Bynes’ 47th Street midtown high-rise building after an employee there reported that someone was smoking marijuana in the building’s lobby. Police said they were then directed to Bynes’ apartment, where the actress invited them in. Officers said they detected a strong smell of marijuana in the apartment and observed the bong — a tube-shaped water pipe commonly used for smoking marijuana — in the apartment. Bynes then grabbed the bong and threw it out the window and the actress was taken into custody, police said.
ITALY
Bullets sent to prosecutor
The prosecutor in former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sex trial has received a series of anonymous threatening letters, including one with two bullets, Milan’s chief prosecutor said on Thursday. The letters sent to Ilda Boccassini have become more frequent since she requested a six-year jail sentence and a lifetime ban on holding public office for Berlusconi, Edmondo Bruti Liberati said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
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
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion