LEBANON
Bomb ‘selfie’ teen dies
A teenager seen posing for a group “selfie” in front of a bomb-laden car moments before it exploded in Beirut died of his wounds on Saturday. “The number of victims from the attack rose to seven after the death of young Mohammad al-Chaar this morning, succumbing to his injuries at the American Hospital in Beirut,” NNA news agency said. Following Friday’s bombing in the heart of Beirut, which targeted and killed Mohammad Chatah, an influential economist and former finance minister, photographers saw the 16-year-old lying on the pavement, his head bloodied, before he was taken to hospital with severe injuries. Chaar had been identified online as one of four youths seen posing in a group selfie posted on social media networks in front of the car that exploded moments later. The picture went viral on the Internet, and the confirmation of his death sparked an outpouring of tributes on social media Web sites.
RUSSIA
Suicide bomber kills 18
A female suicide bomber blew herself up in the entrance hall of Volgograd Station yesterday, killing at least 18 people in the second deadly attack in the space of three days as the country prepares to host next year’s Winter Olympics. The state Investigative Committee said the bomber detonated her explosives in front of a metal detector just inside the main entrance of the train station. Footage on TV showed a massive orange fireball filling the hall and smoke billowing out through shattered windows. A Ministry of Health spokesman told Rossiya-24 television that as many as 50 people were wounded. If the explosion is found to have been another strike by Islamist militants, it will bolster fears of attacks as the country prepares to host the Olympics in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in less than six weeks’ time.
INDONISIA
Pickup hits truck, 18 dead
Police yesterday said an overcrowded pickup van with dozens of mourners has slammed into a truck on Java, killing 18 people and injuring 14 others. On Saturday, police officer Captain Mustofa said the pickup was carrying a group of 29 mourners from East Java’s Probolinggo, who were on their way to pay respects to their relative. He said the vehicle was moving uncontrollably and collided with a trailer truck. The occupants were thrown from the pickup and 15, including two children, died instantly. The others died in the hospital. Mustofa said the driver of the pickup was arrested for reckless driving.
YEMEN
Troops fire on protest
Troops opened fire on a protest against the army’s deadly shelling of a funeral tent erected by the Southern Movement, killing two people on Saturday, an activist said. Four demonstrators were also wounded when the troops opened fire outside the provincial governor’s office in Daleh, activist Majed Shuaibi said. Hundreds of residents joined the protest against Friday’s shelling of the funeral tent, which killed 19 people, four of them children, medical sources said. The Southern Movement — which is campaigning for autonomy or outright secession of the formerly independent south — had set up the tent for mourners paying their condolences after a man was killed in clashes with security forces in Daleh on Monday last week. Those clashes erupted when secessionists tried to storm the governor’s office to hoist the flag of the former South Yemen. The fighting left two policemen and a civilian dead.
UNITED KINGDOM
Fire breaks out on ferry
Police have arrested two men in connection with a fire aboard a North Sea ferry which forced the ship to return shortly after embarking from northern England. The fire broke out late on Saturday, causing seven people to be airlifted to hospitals suffering from smoke inhalation, coast guard officials said. Two Royal Air Force search-and-rescue helicopters and two lifeboats were scrambled after the blaze was detected in the accommodation block as the ferry sailed off the coast of Yorkshire. About 946 passengers and 127 crew were on board the MS King Seaways, a DFDS ferry traveling from Newcastle to Amsterdam, according to a statement issued by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. “Six crew members and a passenger have been airlifted to hospital after a fire on board a ferry approximately 30 miles [48km] north east of Flamborough Head,” it said.
COLOMBIA
Five men found drowned
Police say the bodies of five drowned men have been found along the coast and they suspect the men could have traveled from a Caribbean island in an attempt to reach Central America. Uraba police Colonel Raul Antonio Riano told Caracol Radio that the men’s bodies show no sign of violence. The bodies were found on Saturday at the mouth of the Atrato river in the Gulf of Uraba. Riano says officials are trying to identify the five, who were found with no documents.
BRAZIL
Farmers torch offices
Police say angry farmers in the northern jungle state of Amazonas torched the offices of the federal indigenous affairs agency and several of its vehicles because they were convinced that members of the Tenharim tribe kidnapped three residents of the town of Humaita. Police officer Everton Cruz said on Saturday that the attack occurred on Christmas, nine days after the three men disappeared as they were driving through the Tenharim reservation. He said farmers believe the three were kidnapped and killed in retaliation for what they say was the Dec. 3 murder of an indigenous leader. Police said at the time the leader was killed in a motorcycle accident. Cruz said the Tenharim deny kidnapping the three men. He said federal and state police officers and army troops are searching for the men.
MEXICO
Headless corpses in public
Authorities found five decapitated bodies in the west of the country on Saturday, with letters left with the corpses purportedly signed by a drug cartel, officials said. The bodies, with their heads laying nearby, were found shortly before dawn in two different locations in Michoacan state, a region struggling with gang turf wars. Three headless corpses were found on a bridge’s traffic circle in Tarimbaro, a suburb of Morelia, the state’s capital, Michoacan chief prosecutor Marco Vinicio Aguilera said. “A knife that may have been used to cut the heads was found in the area,” he said. About an hour later, two more were found in a Morelia public square, with the heads on a sidewalk a little further away, Aguilera said. A letter signed with the initials of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel were found with all the bodies. The gang, which operates in the neighboring state of Jalisco, is engaged in a heated turf battle with the Knights Templar cartel, which has dominated Michoacan’s drug trade in recent years.
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