BRAZIL
Two nursery fire victims die
Two children burned in an arson attack at a nursery school in Brazil succumbed to their wounds on Friday, bringing the death toll to eight on the day the first victims were buried. Cecilia Davine Dias and Yasmin Medeiros Salvino, both aged four, died early in the afternoon, a hospital spokesman in the city of Monte Claros told reporters. The tragedy unfolded on Thursday morning in Janauba, a town of 70,000 people about 600km from Belo Horizonte. A security guard at the nursery sprayed his young victims with alcohol before setting fire to the building. He died from burns a few hours later. According to local authorities, he had suffered from mental health issues since 2014. In total, seven four-year-old children were killed, along with a teacher aged 43. Another 40 people were treated at three hospitals in the region. Dozens gathered for the first funerals of victims at a cemetery in Janauba on Friday afternoon. Small white coffins were opened for a few minutes as devastated family members wept. “What has happened is inexplicable. I have no words. When I heard about the fire on the radio, I immediately thought of my grandchildren. I was sure something had happened to them,” said Antonio Pereira da Silva, who buried his granddaughter.
MEXICO
Military helicopter crashes
A military helicopter on Friday crashed in the northern state of Durango, seriously injuring one military member aboard and likely killing seven others, the Secretariat of National Defense said in a statement. The helicopter, a Bell 412, crashed 4km northeast of the town of El Salto in mountainous Durango during a training flight. The one survivor was in grave condition in a hospital, while authorities were searching for the bodies of seven other military members who were presumed to be among the remains of the aircraft. Durango borders Sinaloa State, home of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Military authorities are investigating what happened to the helicopter, the secretariat said.
UNITED STATES
Dead Chinese couple found
Authorities have recovered the bodies of a Chinese couple from a car that plunged off a cliff in California’s Kings Canyon National Park. Fresno County Sheriff’s spokesman Tony Botti on Friday said a rescue crew successfully extracted the bodies a day earlier from the Kings River. He said they are 31-year-old Wang Yinan and his 32-year-old wife, Song Jie. The couple vanished during an August vacation. Officials believe their car plunged 150m over the cliff. The car was found as authorities were recovering another car that had plunged into the river earlier. The bodies of two exchange students from Thailand were recovered from that car last month.
UNITED STATES
Man lived with dead bodies
Prosecutors said a Minnesota man lived in his house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and twin brother for about a year. Robert Kuefler, 60, of White Bear Lake was charged with interference with a dead body or scene of death, because he neglected to tell authorities they died of natural causes, the St Paul Pioneer Press reported. The bodies were found last year. Kuefler was charged this week. Police said he told them his mother, 94-year-old Evelyn Kuefler, died in August 2015 and his brother, Richard Kuefler, died before that and he could not bring himself to bury them. The complaint said his mother’s body was decayed and skeletal, while his brother’s body was “mummified.”
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing