IRELAND
Priest jailed over threats
A priest was jailed on Thursday for hiring men who said they were Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitaries to issue death threats and intimidate his nephew into dropping legal action. Former hospital chaplain Father Francis Kelleher, 59, pleaded guilty to four counts of coercion at the Circuit Court in Cork. The court heard that Kelleher paid three men who said they were from the Continuity IRA, a breakaway faction of the IRA, to threaten his nephew Niall Kelleher in 2012 and 2013. Niall Kelleher was planning to take a civil case against his uncle and had sent the priest a solicitor’s letter before the threats began. Police arrested Francis Kelleher in November 2013 and the priest admitted that he had paid 4,000 euros (US$6,100) to have his nephew threatened. Judge Sean O Donnabhain described what happened as “appalling behavior” and said it was a “profoundly upsetting case.”
MEXICO
Cops, vigilantes clash
Police waged a gunfight on Thursday with rural vigilantes in a poor state plagued by drug cartels, leaving eight people dead, officials said. The vigilantes, known as “community police,” took up arms in several mountain villages and along the coast of Guerrero state in 2013, alleging that authorities were doing nothing to protect them against cartels that carried out extortion, kidnappings and killings. In Thursday’s clash in Igualapa, police tried to stop a pickup truck carrying members of one of these rural policing units. The vehicle did not stop, and the men in it opened fire on police, triggering a gunfight that lasted 12 minutes, the secretariat of state for public security said. Six of the vigilantes and two police officers were killed, a secretariat official said. Several other vigilantes managed to flee, while a police commander was seriously wounded.
UNITED KINGDOM
Never mind the gap
The famous gap that train passengers have been told to mind for decades could be in jeopardy, after successful trials of a safety device to fill the gaps on London train platforms. The rubber devices, appropriately known as gap-fillers, are fixed to the sides of platforms near the doors and have apparently eradicated accidents during a year-long trial. Heathrow Express, which runs trains between the west London airport and Paddington station, said the rubber strips that had been tested in Terminal 5 would be installed across its network at a cost of £58,000 (US$88,721), and could be rolled out nationwide on other lines. Accidents from passengers slipping between the train and the platform accounted for almost half of the fatality risk on modern trains, the firm said, while less serious incidents caused delays while passengers were being cut free or treated.
UNITED STATES
Streaming site shuts down
Grooveshark, an early leader in music streaming that enraged major labels for letting users upload copyrighted songs, abruptly shut down late on Thursday after years of litigation. The Web site went dark with a message posted saying that, in a settlement with the three major record label conglomerates, Grooveshark was ceasing operations immediately and handing all copyrighted work to the companies. “We started out nearly 10 years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music,” the message said. “But despite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service. That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation,” it said.
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