UNITED STATES
Pentagon bans ‘Pokemon’
Department of Defense officials on Friday said employees should not download Pokemon Go onto their government-issued smartphones. “You can imagine a number of reasons [why] that wouldn’t necessarily be a prudent thing to do,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Gordon Trowbridge told reporters. “Aside from any security concerns, I think taxpayers would appreciate government phones being used for government business.” Trowbridge jokingly said he could not confirm reports a Pokemon “gym” — a virtual battle arena — has been placed in the courtyard in the middle of the vast Pentagon building.
BRAZIL
Rousseff’s judgement to begin
The final judgement phase in the impeachment of suspended president Dilma Rousseff is to start on Aug. 25, just four days after the Rio de Janeiro Olympics end, the senate news service said on Friday. “The judgment session for Dilma Rousseff will start on the 25th at 9am. The notice has been delivered to Jose Eduardo Cardozo, the suspended president’s lawyer,” the official news outlet said. Rousseff is accused of breaking budget laws in taking unauthorized government loans to mask the depth of economic difficulties during her 2014 re-election. Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, says her impeachment is a coup in disguise. The senate must vote by a two-thirds majority at the end of the judgement session, which could take several days, to remove her from office. If that happens, interim president Michel Temer would stay on until scheduled elections in 2018.
CUBA
Fidel Castro turns 90
Thousands partied along Havana’s Malecon seafront into the early hours of yesterday, celebrating retired Cuban president Fidel Castro turning 90 to the tune of Latin beats as an electric storm in the distance lit up the night sky. On the strike of midnight, a live band played Happy Birthday in honor of the iconic leftist revolutionary on the “Anti-imperialist Tribune,” a plaza located outside the newly opened US embassy, while fireworks exploded on the other side of the bay. Colorful floats carrying dancers and salsa bands stretched for kilometers down the Malecon, as Havana’s annual carnival was combined this year with Castro’s birthday concert. “This is the best gift we can give him, this party,” said dancer Leydis Campos, 25, decked in a skimpy limegreen outfit, her eyelids caked in glitter. “To 90 years past, and to 90 more.” Tributes have ranged from the conventional, such as photograph exhibits about his life, to the outlandish, with one cigar maker rolling the longest smoke in the world, measuring 90m, in Castro’s honor.
UNITED STATES
‘Criminal Minds’ star fired
Thomas Gibson, the star of Criminal Minds on CBS, has been fired from the show after an altercation with a producer. The actor, who has played investigator Aaron Hotchner on the crime procedural since its debut in 2005, was suspended earlier this week for kicking a producer in what the actor later described as the result of creative differences, according to news reports. However, the producers of the show, ABC Studios and CBS Television Studios, on Friday said that the separation would be made permanent, saying in a statement that “Thomas Gibson has been dismissed from Criminal Minds.”
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