FRANCE
Fire kills eight
Officials said eight people died in an apartment fire early yesterday in Paris and police are investigating whether the fire was started intentionally. Speaking on French TV BFM, Ministry of the Interior spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the dead included two children. Four survivors are hospitalized. Brandet said the firefighters extinguished a small paper fire at about 12:23am in the building, located at the foot of Paris’ famed Montmartre hill. They were called back two hours later for a new fire that began in a ground floor stairwell and quickly engulfed the building’s upper stories. More than 100 firefighters were required to extinguish the blaze.
PERU
‘Priest’ police arrest dealer
Police disguised as priests and toting bibles arrested a female drug dealer in a bustling area of Lima, a police official said on Tuesday. After tracking the woman’s movements for two weeks, the officers finally pounced on Monday as part of an offensive to counter a crime wave, said Dario Calvo, head of a police intelligence unit. He said officers have also posed as street hawkers, beggars and mentally disabled people as they try to blend in on the streets and do intelligence work.
BRAZIL
Stray bullet hits handbag
A woman really almost did shop till she dropped — when a stray bullet lodged in her handbag at a swanky mall in Rio de Janeiro. “I was with a friend coming out of Shopping Leblon, when I heard a noise really close by, as if something had fallen into my bag,” Renata Brito Moret wrote on her Facebook page That something, it turned out, was a bullet that made four holes in the leather bag she had slung over her shoulder during the shopping expedition on Friday. O Globo newspaper said that police had no reports of shootings in the area, suggesting that the bullet was a stray from a distant shot. On Sunday, a man was hit in the hand by a bullet while he played soccer amd last week a 15-year-old girl died after being hit in the head by a stray bullet.
UNITED STATES
Bartender hits jackpot
A Bay Area man who found a US$20 bill on a street outside San Francisco International Airport used it to play the California lottery and won US$1 million, a lottery spokesman said on Monday. Hubert Tang used the lucky bill to buy two scratcher tickets at a store near the airport on Wednesday and won the top prize with one of them, lottery spokesman Greg Parashak said.
UNITED STATES
President splurges on rolls
How many cinnamon rolls does it take to feed a presidential entourage? If you are President Barack Obama and you are unsure, you err on the safe side and take the whole bunch. Obama paid a surprise visit on Tuesday to Snow City Cafe, a brunch spot in downtown Anchorage with a bit of hipster flair. Dressed in a casual coat and sunglasses, he strolled past throngs of cheering crowds into the cafe, where it took just a few seconds before the cinnamon rolls caught his eye. “How many of those do you guys have?” the president asked a bemused barista. “I’m going to take all of those.” Obama asked his staffers and even reporters if they wanted a pastry for the road. “Put a little sampler together,” he said. One unfortunate White House staffer could be seen carrying two giant cardboard boxes of pastries out of the cafe and into the waiting motorcade.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of