DENMARK
Bestiality ban proposed
The government on Sunday proposed a new law blocking sex with animals, saying it needs to put a leash on bestiality so the nation does not become a zoophile hotspot. The law would bring the country in line with other European countries including Germany, Norway and Sweden, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Dan Jorgensen said. “When the rules have been tightened in the rest of Europe, there’s a risk that Denmark will be considered a refuge for people with this proclivity,” Jorgensen said. “That’s why I want to send a clear signal that Denmark is not a refuge for people who want to sexually exploit animals.” Parliament has previously refused to vote for a bestiality ban, but the government now believes it can get enough votes, daily Ekstra Bladet reported.
ITALY
Boy, grandfather found dead
The bodies of a grandfather and his five-year-old grandson, who both have a rare genetic disorder, were discovered on Sunday in a hugging embrace afloat in a river in Lendinara, Rovigo Province. Media reports said the 73-year-old had been caring for the boy while his parents attended a conference about their son’s medical condition. It was the boy’s uncle, a police officer, who discovered the child’s wheelchair as he was jogging along the river, according to the reports. He searched the area and found the two, interlaced and floating on the surface of the river. Reports described the tragedy as a murder-suicide driven by the grandfather’s distress over the boy’s health.
SOMALIA
President denounces blast
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud yesterday said that a car bomb which killed at least 13 people the day before was an act of “desperation” by al-Shabaab insurgents. The attack took place on Sunday evening on a busy road leading to the government district, outside a popular cafe. “It shows the desperation of al-Shabaab because they are only hurting innocent civilians,” Mohamud said in a statement. The group has not claimed responsibility.
TURKEY
Erdogan scores judicial win
Government-backed candidates won eight out of 10 seats in a top judicial body on Sunday, election results showed, in a victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his battle against ally-turned-foe cleric Fethullah Gulen. The vote by about 14,000 judges and prosecutors for members of the High Board of Judges and Prosecutors council was seen as a critical to Erdogan’s efforts to curb the power of Gulen’s Hizmet, or service, movement. The council is responsible for the appointments, transfers, promotions and expulsions of top judicial figures.
ALGERIA
Troops kill militants
Troops killed eight suspected militants in the Bouira region where they have been tracking Muslim extremists, a state news agency reported. Three suspected militants were killed on Friday and another five on Saturday in Bouira, east of Algiers, Algeria Press Service said, citing an unnamed source. Troops are also tracking the Caliphate Soldiers, which last month pledged allegiance to the Islamic State formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Soon after, the Caliphate Soldiers claimed to have kidnapped French tourist Herve Gourdel, who was later beheaded in a video released by the group as punishment for French strikes against Islamic State.
UNITED STATES
Cruz named sexiest woman
Penelope Cruz is Esquire’s “sexiest woman alive.” Cruz is the 11th woman to be given the title by the magazine. Previous honorees include Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Rihanna, Charlize Theron and Scarlett Johansson. The Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Vanilla Sky actress tells Esquire that she had “an attraction to drama” in her teens and 20s, but “could not be less interested now.” Cruz is keeping quiet about her personal life. She declined to comment to the magazine about her actor husband, Javier Bardem, as well as their two children. “That is for us,” she said. The actress will next be seen in the Spanish-language film Ma Ma and in Grimsby with Sacha Baron Cohen.
UNITED STATES
Armed clowns sighted
People dressed as clowns are causing a stir in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The latest after-dark sighting came on Saturday, when police in Bakersfield responded at about 8pm to a report of a clown holding a firearm. Officers searched, but did not find anyone. The Bakersfield Californian reports that the latest sighting came after a week during which police received numerous calls about scary or mischievous clowns. According to the newspaper, police said they have arrested one minor who acknowledged dressing up and chasing younger juveniles.
PANAMA
Salsa star mulls election bid
Salsa star Ruben Blades on Sunday said he could be a candidate in Panama’s 2019 presidential election, which would mark his second attempt at the presidency. The singer, 66, ran in the 1994 presidential election, backed by the movement “Papa Egoro,” which means “Mother Earth” in an indigenous language. Blades lost that election to Ernesto Perez Valladares. Blades, who is also a lawyer with a master’s degree from Harvard University, defines himself as “left-leaning” and identifies with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and the form of government that former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva developed. Between 2004 and 2009 Blades was tourism minister.
BERMUDA
Storm causes blackouts
Tropical Storm Fay lost strength after briefly reaching a Category 1 hurricane in the Atlantic on Sunday, sweeping past the island with strong winds, felling trees and knocking out power to thousands in the British territory. The US National Hurricane Center on Sunday evening said that Fay carried top sustained winds of 100kph. Fay was about 645km east-northeast of the island and moving in an easterly direction. Fay knocked power out for at least 18,000 homes in the early hours of Sunday, officials said.
NORTH KOREA
US soldiers’ remains lost
The government yesterday warned that the untended remains of US servicemen killed in the Korean War were being “carried away” by giant infrastructure projects and blamed Washington for suspending efforts for their recovery. Close to 8,000 Americans remain unaccounted for from the 1950-1953 Korean conflict, according to the US Department of Defense. From 1996, North Korean and US military teams conducted 33 joint recovery missions and recovered 225 sets of remains, but the process was halted in 2005 by then-US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who felt the safety of US teams could not be guaranteed amid rising nuclear tensions. The two sides agreed in 2011 to resume the joint missions, but the US scrapped the plan to protest a rocket launch seen as a disguised missile test.
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘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