UNITED STATES
Woman shoots self filming
A woman in Deltona, Florida, on Sunday tried to Snapchat a video of herself holding a gun, but instead accidentally shot her cellphone, injuring her right hand, authorities said. Regina Powell, 22, said she was “foolishly playing” with the .40 caliber semiautomatic handgun, trying to make a Snapchat video, when it went off, the Volusia County sheriff’s office said. The bullet destroyed her cellphone and injured her thumb and index finger.
UNITED STATES
Scavenger recovers lost ring
Decatur, Michigan, resident Jamie Kennedy needs to make room for another wedding guest: the man who found her engagement ring in the bottom of Lake Michigan. John Dudley, the president of a metal detector club in western Michigan, fought strong waves and scooped up the ring after getting a signal. The discovery was made late last month, two days after Kennedy lost the ring while trying to wash sand off her fingers at the beach in South Haven. WZZM-TV reported that Dudley reached out to Kennedy and offered his services. Kennedy said she “practically walked on water” when Dudley gave her a thumbs-up to indicate that he had found it.
COLOMBIA
Police destroy 104 drug labs
Authorities have destroyed 104 cocaine laboratories capable of producing about 100 tonnes of the drug annually, the head of the anti-narcotics police said on Tuesday. The operation, conducted over five days in the southeastern jungle region, is part of new government strategy focused on combating drug production, as well as the cultivation of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine. “This is a structural blow to the finances of drug trafficking,” anti-narcotics police director General Jose Angel Mendoza told reporters in the jungles of Guaviare. The laboratories were burned down by police commandos.
IRAN
Official verifies Charms’ visit
A semi-official news agency quoted a government official as acknowledging that a British-American porn actress recently visited the nation following a social media outcry. The Iranian Students News Agency on Tuesday quoted Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hasan Qashqavi as saying the actress visited after she “applied for a visa through a travel agency” under a different name. Qashqavi was quoted as telling tourism officials to carefully examine the documents of those trying to visit Tehran. The actress, known as Candy Charms, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. She previously said on Instagram that she visited the country to get a nose job.
FRANCE
Paris tries to stop love locks
Love might know no bounds, but Paris intends to instill some: authorities are going to take a tougher line with swooning couples attaching “love locks” to city bridges as a sign of their undying devotion. In June last year, authorities removed hundreds of thousands of such padlocks from the city’s bridges. The wire mesh panels on which the love locks were attached were replaced by acrylic glass. However, this has not dissuaded tourists, who merely turned their attention to the city’ oldest bridge, the more than 400-year-old Pont Neuf. Paris Deputy Mayor Bruno Juillard said “signboards” would be installed on the bridge and others in French and English, with messages such as “No locks, Paris thanks you” and “Find another way to show your love.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
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