ISRAEL
Palestinian shot dead
Security forces shot dead a suspected Palestinian assailant who tried to stab a man at a busy intersection near a West Bank settlement yesterday, police said, a location that has seen several incidents during two months of violence. A police spokeswoman said the assailant was shot dead as he wielded a knife in the attempted stabbing at Gush Etzion junction and a bystander was lightly hurt from a stray bullet fired by an officer securing the location.
SAUDI ARABIA
Execution plan draws threat
Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen threatened the Saudi government over its plan to carry out a mass execution of prisoners, including al-Qaeda members, the militant group announced in a statement posted on social media. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the deadliest branches of the global militant network, said it was aware of Saudi intentions to execute its members in Saudi prisons and pledged to carry out attacks in response. “We swear to God, our blood will be shed before the blood of our captives, and their pure blood will not dry before we shed the blood of the soldiers of Al Saud,” the group said in a statement which was posted on Twitter and dated yesterday.
TURKEY
Newspaper taxes probed
Newspaper Cumhuriyet, whose top two journalists were arrested last week on charges of espionage and terrorist propaganda, is facing an investigation into its tax accounts, its chief executive said. A court on Thursday last week ordered the arrest of Can Dundar, the paper’s editor-in-chief, and senior editor Erdem Gul over the publication of footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency helping send weapons to Syria. The video footage at the heart of the court case, released in May, purported to show Turkish police opening crates of weapons and ammunition bound for Syria on the back of trucks said to belong to the MIT National Intelligence Organisation. Publication of the story at the time prompted President Tayyip Erdogan to vow revenge, saying those behind it endangered security and would “pay a heavy price.”
UNITED STATES
Coke obesity group disbands
A nonprofit funded by Coca-Cola Co to combat obesity is disbanding following revelations about the beverage maker’s involvement with the group. The Global Energy Balance Network on Monday said on its Web site that it is “discontinuing operations due to resource limitations.” The decision was effective immediately. The group had previously said that it received an “unrestricted gift” from Coke and that the Atlanta-based soft drink giant had “no input” into its activities.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘You’re fat’ card probed
Police stepped in on Monday after a woman on London’s metro system was handed a card calling her a “fat, ugly human.” Health worker Kara Florish said in a tweet the card she was given on the Underground was “hateful” and “cowardly” and “could potentially upset people struggling with confidence.” She tweeted a picture of the card, which on one side said “fat” and on the other read: “Our organisation hates and resents fat people. We object to the enormous amount of food resources you consume while half the world starves. And we do not understand why you fail to grasp that by eating less you will be better off, slimmer, happy and find a partner who is not a perverted chubby-lover, or even find a partner at all,” the message continued.
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
‘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
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of