RUSSIA
Cosmonaut sets record
Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, now aboard the International Space Station, has broken the record for total time in space by spending more than two years in orbit during his career. At 1:42am Moscow time on Monday, Padalka, the mission commander, broke cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev’s record of 803 days, nine hours and 41 minutes. Padalka is due to return to Earth on Sept. 11. On June 21, while in orbit, he celebrated his 57th birthday.
FRANCE
Poisoning charges filed
A woman was on Monday charged with seducing and killing an elderly man and poisoning three others. Patricia Dagorn, who is in her 50s, is serving a five-year jail sentence for theft, fraud and kidnapping concerning an 88-year-old widowed teacher. A source in the new probe said she was taken from prison to be charged with “poisoning with premeditation” in the first case in 2011 and murder for a second death the same year in the city of Nice. In the case for which Dagorn was jailed in 2013, police found Valium and methadone at the home of her victim, a retired teacher identified as Robert. Robert told reporters at the time: “I almost died for three days of love.”
FRANCE
US spied on officials, firms
The US wiretapped two of the nation’s economy ministers and spied on the country’s largest companies, local media reported citing WikiLeaks documents, just days after it emerged the US had spied on three of the country’s leaders. Pierre Moscovici, former minister of the economy under former president Francois Hollande, and Francois Baroin, minister for budget and then for the economy under former president Nicholas Sarkozy, were both reportedly targeted by the US National Security Agency. The newspaper Liberation late on Monday said the US agency had spied on “almost all of the CAC 40” index of largest listed firms.
UNITED STATES
Sugary drinks deadly: study
Sodas and other sugary drinks may cause up to 184,000 deaths a year worldwide, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Circulation. The report analyzed the global risks of death due to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers linked to the consumption of sugary drinks. Researchers estimated that about 133,000 people died from diabetes due to the consumption of what the report called “sugar-sweetened beverages.” About 45,000 died globally from cardiovascular diseases arising from sugary drinks and 6,450 people died from cancers linked to the beverages, researchers estimated. Mexico had the highest death rate due to sugary drinks with a rate of 450 deaths per 1 million adults, the report said.
CANADA
Dismemberer seeks dates
A man sentenced to life in prison for killing and dismembering his Chinese lover and mailing body parts to schools and political parties has joined a matchmaking Web site for inmates. Luka Magnotta’s profile was posted on Sunday on Canadian Inmates Connect with two photos of the former stripper and prostitute in an unbuttoned white shirt. He was convicted in December last year of first-degree murder for the 2012 killing of university student Jun Lin (林俊) in Montreal. Magnotta filmed some of Lin’s dismemberment, posted the video online and mailed body parts to the Ottawa offices of two political parties, as well as to schools in British Columbia. Magnotta’s ad does not mention his specific conviction.
CHINA
CCP recruitment down
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recruited almost 15 percent fewer new members last year amid hopes that better-qualified candidates will expand its guiding role in society. Accounting for deaths and other losses, membership expanded by 1.1 million members, or 1.3 percent, last year 4 to a total of 87.79 million, the party’s Organization Department said late on Monday in a statement on its Web site. An additional 56,000 party units were added in offices, companies and other organizations for a total of 4.36 million nationwide. However, recruitment of new members fell by 14.6 percent to just over 2 million, or 351,000 fewer than in 2013, the party said. The figures were released ahead of the 94th anniversary of the party’s establishment today.
AFGHANISTAN
Truck bombing kills two
A suicide truck bomb in Helmand Province yesterday killed two civilians and wounded more than 40, officials said. The attacker detonated a truck loaded with explosives at the gate of the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Provincial police spokesman Farid Ahmad Obaid said all of the casualties were civilians. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, President Ashraf Ghani yesterday nominated a female judge to sit on the Supreme Court in an unprecedented move that has angered some Islamic conservatives. Anisa Rasouli, the head of the Afghan Women Judges Association and a former juvenile court judge, was the only female nominated to the nine-member bench after the announcement was delayed due to opposition by a group of Islamic conservatives earlier this month. “I’m proud to announce that for the very first time I have nominated a woman to the Supreme Court,” Ghani told a gathering of diplomats and women’s rights activists. “Appointing a woman to the Supreme Court does not alter the judicial system. We do have full support of the Ulema [Islamic scholars] for it.”
AUSTRALIA
Smoking ban sparks riot
Hundreds of inmates at a maximum security prison in Melbourne yesterday rioted, forcing the evacuation of prison staff, as a protest against a smoking ban at the facility spun out of control. Television footage from the prison in Ravenhall showed prisoners with their faces covered, carrying sticks as makeshift weapons, while smoke was also seen. As many as 300 inmates were involved, the Australian Broadcasting Corp said. The smoking ban, being imposed at prisons across the state, was due to take effect at Ravenhall yesterday.
JAPAN
Solar plane still aloft
The Solar Impulse 2 was high above the Pacific Ocean yesterday, more than a quarter of the way to Hawaii after leaving Nagoya, the mission Web site showed. The solar-powered plane has 6,136 more kilometers to go to reach Hawaii. “Enjoying every moment of this flight. Getting to this point has been challenging,” Swiss pilot Andri Borschberg tweeted.
LIBERIA
New Ebola fatality reported
A teenager has died of Ebola in the first recorded case since the country was declared free of the virus on May 9, Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said yesterday. “A 17-year-old corpse was tested positive for Ebola virus. This took place in Margibi County. There is no need to panic. The corpse has been buried and our contact tracing has started work,” Nyenswah said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in