UNITED STATES
Kid breaches White House
A toddler squeezed through the White House gates on Thursday evening, causing a brief security lockdown on Pennsylvania Avenue and amusing White House reporters awaiting late-breaking news on Iraq. “We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him, but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on [his] way with [his] parents,” Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said in a statement provided to White House reporters.
UNITED STATES
Death pit dig nears end
Paleontologists are completing their first excavation in 30 years inside an unusual US cave thought to hold the remains of tens of thousands of ancient animals that fell to their deaths. Bones found in the Wyoming cave could include those of North American lions, short-faced bears and other now-extinct species from 25,000 years ago. The cave’s only entrance is a hole in the ground that is almost impossible to see until you are next to it. Scientists say that over millennia, thousands of unwary animals plummeted about 24m to their deaths.
ARGENTINA
Activist meets lost grandson
A prominent human rights activist in Argentina has finally met the grandson taken by the military during the country’s so-called dirty war in the 1970s. Estela Barnes de Carlotto met privately with the now 36-year-old man she refers to as Guido, the name her slain daughter intended to give him. De Carlotto is revealing little publicly about the meeting. De Carlotto is the founder of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
UNITED STATES
Watterson strips up for bid
Artwork from Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson’s three-day return to comics is being auctioned to benefit Parkinson’s disease research. Watterson collaborated with Pearls Before Swine cartoonist Stephan Pastis for the three comic strips in June after a long absence from the funny pages. The strips are up for bid online via Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, with each expected to sell for more than US$10,000. Heritage says the three-strip arc follows Pastis’ alter-ego as he turns the drawing of the comic over to a second-grader. At Watterson’s request, the artwork is being sold on behalf of Team Cul de Sac, a charity established in honor of cartoonist Richard Thompson, who has Parkinson’s. The proceeds are to go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Calvin and Hobbes ended in 1995.
BRAZIL
Police ‘dismantle’ gang
Police dismantled a well-armed gang accused of extorting, torturing and killing poor residents of Rio de Janeiro, state security authorities said Thursday. A total of “21 people were arrested as part of the operation dubbed ‘Tentacles,’” officials said in a statement, adding that guns, documents and luxury cars were also seized. The operation dismantled the group “and left leaderless Rio’s biggest gang,” said the head of the anti-organized crime unit, Alexandre Capote. Capote said the group took in “more than 1 million reais a month” (about US$500,000) in an extortion scheme at massive federal housing projects. Members reportedly evicted residents and then rented or sold the apartments to others. “The residents were tortured and killed if they didn’t accept the conditions of the gang members,” civil police chief Andre Drummond said, according to Brazilian news Web site G1.
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
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of