EGYPT
Car bomb wounds police
A car bomb wounded six policemen yesterday as it exploded in front of a police building in Cairo, the Ministry of the Interior said, the latest in a wave of militant attacks that has rocked the country. The powerful blast in northern Cairo’s Shubra District came in the middle of the night, a journalist said. The blast made a wide crater near the four-story building, shattered its windows and destroyed a major part of the front portion of a surrounding wall, a correspondent reported from the site.
? TURKEY
Election date proposed
The Higher Election Board has proposed Nov. 1 as a possible date for early elections after the failure of attempts to form a coalition government following June 7 polls, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The proposal, presented to political parties before a final decision is made, came three days ahead of Sunday’s deadline for forming a new government. The election board is set to determine an exact date for elections after the parties give their opinions, Anatolia said.
SOUTH KOREA
Ex-PM’s conviction upheld
The nation’s first female prime minister, Han Myung-sook, is to be sent to prison after the Supreme Court upheld her bribery conviction, court officials said yesterday. The court said it had rejected the appeal by the 71-year-old Han, who was sentenced to two years in prison for taking kickbacks from a businessman in a 2013 ruling by the Seoul High Court. Han has avoided jail since 2013 while she appealed the prison sentence. Supreme Court officials said their ruling is final.
AUSTRALIA
Actress found guilty of abuse
Veteran actress Maggie Kirkpatrick, who played a violent and sadistic warden nicknamed “The Freak” in a cult soap opera set in a women’s prison, was convicted yesterday of molesting a 14-year-old psychiatric hospital patient in her home more than 30 years ago. The series was known as Prisoner in Australia, and Prisoner: Cell Block H or Caged Women overseas. Kirkpatrick, 74, had pleaded not guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates Court to two counts of indecently assaulting the young fan in 1984 and one count of gross indecency.
SPAIN
Axing of US singer slammed
The government has condemned a reggae festival’s decision to boot a Jewish-American singer from the line-up after he declined to state his position on a Palestinian state. Matisyahu, who fuses reggae and hip-hop with Jewish influences in his songs, had been due to perform at the weeklong Rototom SunSplash festival, one of Europe’s largest reggae festivals in Benicassim on Saturday. However, a local branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement accused Matisyahu of being anti-Palestinian and a “Zionist” who supports the practice of “apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
UNITED STATES
Spacesuit work Web-funded
The Smithsonian’s first shot at online crowdfunding ended on Wednesday after raising a hefty US$719,779 to restore the spacesuit that Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon. A total of 9,477 people contributed to the month-long Kickstarter “Reboot the Suit” campaign, which surpassed its US$500,000 goal on July 24.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion