UNITED STATES
Salesman taken for a ride
A Maserati is missing after police say a man conned a salesman during a test drive. Police in Boca Raton, Florida, said 45-year-old Michael McGilvary II went to a dealership to test drive a US$150,000 Maserati GranTurismo. He and a salesman drove to a marina so McGilvary could supposedly show his girlfriend the car. They walked down the dock, then McGilvary told the salesman he would get his girlfriend. When he did not return after 30 minutes, the salesman searched for McGilvary. The valet told him McGilvary had driven off. McGilvary was arrested on Wednesday on auto theft charges, one day later, but the car was not found.
GERMANY
Car driven into pedestrians
A man drove a car into pedestrians in a central square in Heidelberg on Saturday, injuring three people, then fled and was shot after being tracked down by officers, police said. One of the victims later died. The man, who was driving a rental car, hit three people outside a bakery on Saturday afternoon. A 73-year-old German man died of his injuries in the evening at a local hospital. A 32-year-old Austrian man and a 29-year-old Bosnian woman were slightly injured. The driver, who is believed to have been carrying a knife, then got out of his car, police said. A short time later, he was intercepted by a police patrol and shot by an officer following a short standoff. The suspect, a 35-year-old German whose identity was not released, was taken to a hospital and underwent an operation.
FRANCE
Two terror suspects arrested
Two men who had been arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack in France were charged on Saturday, legal sources said. The suspects, a 19-year-old and a 27-year-old, were arrested on Tuesday in the coastal city of Marseille and the central city of Clermont-Ferrand. Both men, known to intelligence services for belonging to the Muslim Salafist community, were indicted on charges of criminal association in connection with a criminal terrorist enterprise, as well as for possession of firearms. During raids, police recovered a Kalashnikov rifle and a shotgun, a grenade, a knife, and two bulletproof vests.
UNITED STATES
Fargo police admit error
Fargo police are planning cultural sensitivity training after an officer responding to a report of a fire arrested a man at a Native American sweat lodge. Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney said the man’s disorderly conduct arrest was the result of a misunderstanding, and that the man has been released from jail and will not be charged. “We got some new people on the police force and they don’t know about the sweat lodge. The older guys do, but this is ... he really didn’t know how a sweat lodge works or what happens so we’re gonna go through what this is about and what’s happening out there,” Mahoney told KFGO radio. A sweat lodge is a covered dome, sometimes a tent-type structure, used in Native American cultural ceremonies. Willow branches are used and water is poured over heated rocks to produce steam. This particular sweat lodge was approved by Fargo’s Native American Commission and has been at the site for years, but could use some signage, the mayor said. “If you look at the site you wouldn’t be able to tell that this is a Native American area of worship,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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
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