UNITED STATES
Stray bullet kills toddler
A 15-month-old girl was killed on Saturday by a stray bullet that pierced a wall in her family’s apartment in northern New Jersey, authorities said. The bullet, which investigators think was fired outside the building, struck the child at about 4:30pm while she and her parents were in their second-floor apartment in Irvington, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said in a statement with Irvington Police Director Tracy Bowers. The girl, identified as Sanai Cunningham, was pronounced dead at Newark Beth Israel Hospital, the officials said. On Saturday, investigators had not identified a motive for the shooting or who fired the gun. The Essex County Homicide Task Force was investigating the shooting, the officials said.
BERMUDA
Tropical storm approaches
Tropical Storm Fay headed toward a close brush with the country before dawn yesterday, as the British island territory off the US coast prepared for heavy rains, high winds and rough surf. Fay was centered about 65km south of Bermuda early yesterday and moving north-northeast at 28kph. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 110kph. A tropical storm warning was in effect.
UNITED STATES
‘Dead’ son alive and well
An Alaskan couple who had been told by police that their son had died in a car crash was stunned when they went to inform his girlfriend and their son opened the door. Karen Priest said her husband, Jay, started sobbing, and she was in shock. “There are no words,” she said on Friday. “We just kept staring at him.” Justin Priest, 29, said he had gotten up to let out his puppy at 5:30am when his parents and brother knocked. They started screaming when he opened the door. The Priests had been awakened at 3am on Thursday by a knock on the door. An Alaska State Trooper informed them that Justin had died. They started calling out-of-state relatives. The Priests went to tell another son, Cody, who collapsed when he heard the news, Karen said. The parents and Cody drove to find Justin’s long-time girlfriend, Julia, so she could hear the news in person. Jay knocked on the door. “It opens, and right here is Justin. I don’t even see it, but Jay is sobbing. It doesn’t compute to me. Then I see him,” Karen said. “You want it to be true, but you go: ‘Am I hallucinating?’ Justin didn’t know what was going on.” “I didn’t know why they were yelling and screaming,” Justin Priest said. “I was mostly asleep. They were yelling: ‘Praise Jesus, it’s a miracle.”’ Juneau police have apologized for the anguish the mistake caused. Police had wanted troopers to contact the Priest family to find out if the crash victim was their son, but the request was unclearly transmitted or misinterpreted and the officer took the assignment as a death notification, Juneau Chief Bryce Johnson said.
UNITED STATES
Courthouse made ‘embassy’
A vacant Santa Fe courthouse was transformed this week into a US embassy in the Middle East, thanks to the magic of television. Crews have been filming in downtown Santa Fe for the USA Network pilot, Stanistan, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. The dramedy follows CIA officers, Department of State employees and journalists working out of a compound. Dexter star Jennifer Carpenter headlines the series. It also co-stars Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights) and Jonathan Cake (Desperate Housewives). An entrance of the former courthouse was guarded by gray walls topped with barbed wire. A government seal was attached to the main doors with numerous sandbags lining the walkway.
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