UNITED STATES
Actor Verne Troyer dies
The diminutive actor who starred in the Austin Powers movies as “Mini Me,” Verne Troyer, died on Saturday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 49. The cause of death was not announced, but the family wrote that “depression and suicide are very serious issues… You never know what kind of battle someone is going through inside. But be kind to one another. And always know, it’s never too late to reach out to someone for help,” his family posted on his Instagram account. Troyer, who was 81cm tall, is best known for The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Power in Goldmember. He also had the role of the goblin Griphook in the Harry Potter movies. He had more than 25 other film credits to his name.
UNITED KINGDOM
Social media firms warned
Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt yesterday said that the government would introduce new laws targeting online social media companies if they do not do more to protect children. In a strongly worded letter to Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter and others, Hunt said their failure to prevent you” was “unacceptable and irresponsible.” He said he was particularly concerned about the lack of age verification measures, with thousands breaching minimum user age rules. He gave the companies a week to set out steps they are taking to cut underage use, prevent cyberbullying and promote screen time limits.
UNITED STATES
Counter-protesters arrested
Ten people were arrested on Saturday when a rally attended by a handful of neo-Nazis was met with hundreds of counter-protesters in the Georgia town of Newman, local media reported. Hundreds of police officers were deployed ahead of the event organized by the National Socialist Movement, one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the country. However, only a few dozen far-right members showed up, among them the movement’s leader Jeff Schoep. The 10 arrested were counter-protesters.
SPAIN
March for prisoners held
Several thousand protesters marched on Saturday in Bilbao to demand that imprisoned members of the Basque group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) be moved to prisons closer to their homes. Hundreds of members of ETA are kept in Spanish and French prisons, mostly outside the Basque region.
UNITED STATES
Nude gunman kills three
A nude gunman yesterday shot dead three people and injured at least four more at a restaurant on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, police said. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said in a statement that the shooting occurred at a Waffle House in Antioch at 3:25am. “A patron wrestled away the gunman’s rifle. He was nude & fled on foot. He is a white man with short hair,” the statement added.
UNITED STATES
Nature out to get man
It was third time unlucky for a Colorado man attacked by a shark in Hawaii — as he had already been mauled by a bear and bitten by a rattlesnake, all in less than four years. Dylan McWilliams, 20, was bodyboarding in the ocean off Kauai on Thursday, when what he believed to be a tiger shark about 2m long chomped him on the leg, the Honolulu Star Advertiser reported. McWilliams was able to swim about 30m back to shore. He received seven stitches, compared with the nine staples in his scalp following an altercation with a black bear in July last year.
SAUDI ARABIA
Drones to be regulated
The Ministry of the Interior yesterday instructed drone enthusiasts to obtain permission to fly the devices until regulations were finalized, a day after security forces shot down a recreational drone near the king’s palace in Riyadh. Amateur online videos of heavy gunfire in the capital’s Khozama District on Saturday sparked fears of possible political unrest. A senior official told reporters there were no casualties when the drone was shot down and that King Salman was not in the palace at the time. A security screening point had noticed the flying of a small unauthorized recreational drone, leading security forces to deal with it “according to their orders and instructions,” state-run Saudi Press Agency said.
CHINA
Dragon boat accident kills 17
Seventeen people were killed on Saturday after two dragon boats capsized in Guilin, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Rowers on board the two boats were practicing for a race in the Taohua River when the accident occurred on Saturday afternoon, tipping 57 people into the water. About 200 rescuers were sent to help. About 40 people were pulled out of the water alive with rescue work ending around 10pm, Xinhua said. Authorities in Guilin said villagers had organized a practice session without notifying police, and that two organizers were detained.
IRAN
‘Torturer of Tehran’ arrested
Police have arrested a former prosecutor known as the “torturer of Tehran,” who faces a two-year prison sentence over the death of prisoners following 2009 protests, media reported yesterday. The official Web site of the judiciary, Mizanonline.com, said former Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi had been arrested, without elaborating. Mortazavi was in December last year sentenced to prison by an appeals court. The court found him guilty of “abetting and aiding” torture and the deaths of protesters arrested after the disputed re-election of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
SYRIA
Mass grave found in Raqa
Dozens of bodies, including those of extremists and civilians, have been found in a mass grave in the former Islamic State group stronghold of Raqa, a local official said on Saturday. Nearly 50 bodies had already been recovered from the mass grave, which could contain up to 200 bodies, Abdallah al-Eriane, a senior official with Raqa Civil Council now running the city, said. The mass grave was under a football pitch, close to a hospital where the extremists had dug in before being chased out of the city. “It was apparently the only place available for burials, which were done in haste. The jihadists were holed up in the hospital,” the official said, adding that some bodies were marked with the nom de guerre of the militants while civilians just had first names.
JAPAN
World’s oldest person dies
A woman born in the final year of the 19th century and believed to have been the world’s oldest person died on Saturday, Kyodo news agency said. She was 117. Nabi Tajima, born in 1900, died from old age at a hospital on her native southwestern island of Kikaijima, Kyodo said. Guinness World Records had been conducting research with a view to certifying Tajima as the oldest person alive after the previous record holder, Violet Brown of Jamaica, died last year at 117, Kyodo said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion