FRANCE
Attacker’s brother charged
Authorities on Friday filed preliminary charges against the brother of a Tunisian man who stabbed to death two young women in Marseille. Anis Hanachi was on Thursday transferred from Italy to France and on Friday appeared before an investigating judge, a French judicial official said. The judge handed down preliminary charges of criminal association with a terrorist enterprise with a view to committing an attack, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to an ongoing investigation. Preliminary charges mean that investigators have strong reason to believe a crime was committed, but allow further time for investigation. Hanachi, 25, was last month arrested on an international warrant issued by French authorities accusing him of involvement in the Oct. 1 Marseille train station attack and of international terrorism. Hanachi, who has fought in Syria, is suspected of having radicalized his brother and might have had a role in organizing the attack. The attacker, 29-year-old Ahmed Hanachi, was shot dead after the attack.
GERMANY
‘Bomb’ a zucchini: police
After a worried resident alerted police to what he thought was a World War II bomb in his garden, officers rushed over — and found a particularly large zucchini. Police were on Thursday morning summoned to the scene in Bretten, near the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, by an 81-year-old man. They on Friday said in a statement that officers determined “the object, which really did look very like a bomb” was actually a 40cm zucchini. The offending vegetable, which was very dark in color, weighed about 5kg, they said, adding that they believe someone threw it over a hedge into the garden. Unexploded wartime bombs are unearthed frequently during construction work, often forcing authorities to evacuate tens of thousands of residents while they are defused.
PERU
Germans stuck in wreckage
A German man said the bodies of three of his college student friends remain trapped in the wreckage of a bus five days after it crashed. Four students from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology were among 20 people who died when their bus plunged off a bridge into a river in the southern Andes. The Germans were to attend the wedding of Martin Schlegel, who told reporters from the crash site that the bodies of three of his friends have yet to be recovered. He criticized the bus company’s lack of a passenger list, the five-day delay in identifying his friends and the slow response from authorities.
UNITED STATES
Woman jailed for drunk ride
A 53-year-old woman riding a horse down a busy Florida highway has been arrested and charged with drunk driving. Polk County Sheriff’s officials said in a statement that someone called 911 about a woman who appeared confused and possibly in danger. When deputies arrived they found Donna Byrne riding her horse on the road. Officers performed a sobriety test and said she gave breath samples that registered a blood-alcohol level of .161 — twice Florida’s legal limit of .08. Byrne was charged with driving under the influence and animal neglect for endangering and failing to provide proper protection for the horse. Deputies took the horse to the Polk County Sheriff’s Animal Control livestock facility. She was booked into the Polk County Jail. Records did not list an attorney for her.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the