RUSSIA
Clashes at gay rights rally
A gay rights rally in St Petersburg has ended in scuffles after several dozen protesters were confronted by about 200 conservative and religious activists. The police standing nearby waited until clashes broke out between the two groups before intervening. According to news agencies, the police detained 67 people from both sides. The scuffles started after anti-gay protesters tore a rainbow flag out of a woman’s hands. The St Petersburg city government had sanctioned the rally despite the government’s June passage of a contentious law outlawing gay “propaganda.” Russian gays have faced increasing pressure and threats of violence, protesters said. St Petersburg police could not immediately be reached for comment.
FRANCE
Belgium wins wine tasting
Belgium on Saturday won the first world blind wine-tasting competition for teams, with Denmark and England finishing second and third, organizers said. Philippe Ketelslegers, Filip Mesdom, Eric Derenne and Serge Condens took top honors at the competition held in the southwestern town of Leognan, near the nation’s winegrowing capital of Bordeaux. A total of 16 teams from around the world, including South Africa, China, Russia, Argentina and Quebec, took part. The competition aimed to “bring together... all these amateurs, tasters from the world over, who can sometimes feel isolated in their home countries,” said Philippe de Cantenac, a journalist for the French wine monthly that organized the event. The teams, blind-tasting 12 fine wines from around the world, had to identify their countries of origin, the grape varieties used in them, their appellations and their vintages. A second edition of the competition will be held next year in another city, Cantenac said. The magazine La Revue du Vin de France has already hosted European championships in the same town since 2008.
ISRAEL
Gaza tunnels uncovered
The military said it has discovered an underground tunnel dug from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip into Israel. The military says it believes the Islamist group, which governs the Palestinian territory, dug the tunnel to carry out an attack or to kidnap Israelis. The army yesterday said it discovered the tunnel a week ago, after finding an opening near a kibbutz along the border with Gaza. The army statement added that the tunnel is 2.5km long and appears to have been recently dug and in use until its discovery. Hamas has dug tunnels into the country in the past. In 2006, Hamas militants sneaked into the country through one such tunnel, kidnapped a soldier and held him hostage in Gaza for five years.
EGYPT
MiG crash kills one
An army MiG-21 aircraft crashed yesterday near the southern city of Luxor, leaving one person dead and three others injured on the ground after the crew ejected, officials said. The Russian-built MiG was conducting a routine training flight when it caught fire shortly after takeoff from a military airport in Luxor.
Both pilots parachuted out of the plane before it crashed onto a small village in the al-Madamod area, killing one person, officials said. Three people were also injured in the accident and rushed to Luxor’s main hospital. Military and civil police forces cordoned off the area of the crash as authorities worked to determine the cause, officials said.
PERU
Bus falls into ravine, 52 die
A makeshift bus carrying 52 Quechua Indians home from a party plunged off a cliff into the Chaupimayo River on Friday night, killing everyone on board, including 13 children. The accident occurred as the red-and-yellow cargo truck made its way back from Santa Teresa, about 500km southeast of Lima. It went off the road and fell about 200m into a deep ravine, ending up in the river. Rescuers equipped with little more than flashlights spent the night searching without success for survivors amid the twisted steel and large boulders, pulling bodies from the water. Authorities said bodies were found as far as 100m away from the impact site, suggesting they were thrown from the vehicle. The cause of the accident has not been determined, firefighter Captain David Taboada said. Throughout the day, relatives of the victims arrived to identify their loved ones. Local farmers prepared meals for the mourning relatives to eat. Fedia Castro, mayor of the district where Santa Teresa is located, told Canal N television that rural residents must rely on informal forms of transport, such as the cargo truck, because no public buses exist in the area.
UNITED STATES
Falling plane door hits motel
A door that fell off a small plane has been found on a motel roof in Monterey, California. The Salinas Californian reported that the door fell from a Beechcraft King Air twin-turboprop plane that took off from Monterey Regional Airport on Thursday afternoon. The pilot heard a pop and turned around to land. He realized the door was missing when he was back on the ground, but the door was not discovered until Friday morning. The front desk manager at the El Castell Motel said no one heard the 34kg door crash into the tile roof because the room below was unoccupied. The National Transportation Safety Board will examine the door and the plane to determine why it came loose.
BRAZIl
River boat sinks, killing 12
Twelve people were killed on Saturday when their boat sank in Amapa State during a traditional procession on a river in honor of the Virgin Mary, relief workers said. Six other people were still missing from the ship that was carrying 100 participants even though it had a capacity limit of 40, firefighters said. Firefighters had accompanied the procession, but the accident took place as the boats were returning to their ports, a spokesman said. “The boat was participating in the procession, which takes about two hours in the Amazonian state of Amapa, and must have capsized after hitting a sandbar upon its return,” firefighter Commander Miguel Rosario said. Officials said the rescue operation was to continue yesterday.
GUATEMALA
Facebook killers convicted
A court has sentenced two men to 200 years in prison each for murdering two teenagers they contacted via Facebook, a judicial source said on Saturday. Eduardo Chen and Saul Garcia Arriaza were convicted for the deaths of Heydi Montufar Lorenzana, 16, and Heiser Alexandra Mercado Santos, 18. The Public Prosecutor’s Office had initially requested 308 years behind bars. Prosecutors argued during the trial that the two men chatted over Facebook with the teenagers and set up a meeting with them. The investigation showed that the girls were killed on August 22, 2011, after being raped. Their bodies were found six days later in Amatitlan. The convictions were the first in the county where the victims and perpetrators contacted each other via Facebook.
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