MEXICO
Blast injures five captives
A gas explosion ripped through a house where dozens of abducted migrants were being held captive in a city near the Texas border on Monday, injuring five people, two of them gravely, authorities said. Grupo Coordinacion, a joint governmental security agency in the state of Tamaulipas, said in a statement that the afternoon blast blew out the windows and doors of the home in Reynosa, which is across from McAllen, Texas. Three of the five were hospitalized, and all were from Guatemala. Authorities were trying to locate an unknown number of migrants who may have been injured, but ran away after the blast. Investigators determined the house was being used by a criminal gang to hold captive at least 60 migrants of different nationalities who were trying to get to the US. The migrants told police they were abducted a week ago.
WORLD
Shark attacks hit record
Last year saw a record-
setting 98 unprovoked shark attacks worldwide, including 30 in Florida alone, data released by the Florida Museum of Natural History on Monday showed. The previous record was 88 attacks in 2000, scientists say. International Shark Attack File curator George Burgess said attacks were expected to continue to increase as human populations grow and shark populations recover. Of the six fatalities last year, two happened off the Indian Ocean island of Reunion; the others occurred off Australia, Egypt, New Caledonia and the US. The US led the world with 59 attacks, including those in Florida, eight in each of the Carolinas and seven in Hawaii. California and Texas each had two attacks, and New York and Mississippi each had one. Australia and South Africa followed the US, with 18 and 8 attacks respectively.
UNITED STATES
Sikh barred over turban
A Sikh Indian-American actor and designer on Monday said he was barred from boarding an Aeromexico flight from Mexico City to New York because he refused to remove his turban. “This morning in Mexico City I was told I could not board my @aeromexico flight to NYC because of my turban,” Waris Ahluwalia wrote in his Instagram account. The 41-year-old bearded actor posted a picture of himself holding up his boarding pass and another in front of an Aeromexico customer service desk. The House of Waris chief was heading to New York’s fashion week. The Mexican airline issued a statement late on Monday saying that it was obligated to follow “federal requirements in terms of security determined by the US Transportation Security Administration to review passengers.” The airline said it “regrets the inconvenience that any passenger may perceive from the application of these procedures” and it vowed to transport all passengers regardless of their religious beliefs.
AUSTRALIA
Use sunscreen: Jackman
Movie star Hugh Jackman, who has again undergone treatment for skin cancer, yesterday urged people to wear sunscreen and have regular check-ups. The 47-year-old first had a basal cell carcinoma removed in 2013 after his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, told him to get a mark on his nose checked. He has been treated several times since. “An example of what happens when you don’t wear sunscreen,” he tweeted, alongside a photo of himself with a plaster over his nose. “Basal Cell. Mildest form of cancer. USE SUNSCREEN PLEASE!!” Jackman grew up in Australia, which has one of the highest incidences of skin cancer in the world.
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘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