PANAMA
Immigrants not threat: pope
Pope Francis on Friday said that it was “senseless” to condemn every immigrant as a threat to society. Francis was speaking after leading a solemn ceremony for hundreds of thousands of young pilgrims at World Youth Day. The Catholic Church wants to foster a culture “that welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates, that does not stigmatize, much less indulge in a senseless and irresponsible condemnation of every immigrant as a threat to society,” he said. In a wide-ranging speech to round off a massive gathering of young people in a Panama City park, the pope also made a plea for the environment that he said was “trampled underfoot by disregard and a fury of consumption beyond all reason.” Society in general “has lost the ability to weep and to be moved by suffering,” Francis said. Instead of solidarity “from an opulent society,” many encountered rejection, sorrow and misery “and are singled out and treated as responsible for all society’s ills,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Flight attendant dies in air
A Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu to New York City was diverted to San Francisco after a male flight attendant died of an apparent heart attack, officials said on Friday. Hawaiian Airlines Flight HA50 on Thursday night landed after a crew member had “a suspected heart attack,” San Francisco International Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said. Medical personnel attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation during the flight, but suspended those efforts prior to landing. The San Mateo County coroner declared the crewmember dead on arrival, Yakel said. Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman Ann Botticelli said that Emile Griffith had been with the company for 31 years. “Emile both loved and treasured his job at Hawaiian and always shared that with our guests,” Botticelli said. The airline has made counseling available for Griffith’s colleagues, she said. The airplane was carrying 253 passengers and 12 crewmembers when it departed Honolulu on Thursday. The passengers who landed in San Francisco five hours after takeoff were put on other flights, Yakel said. Andrea Bartz, who was on the flight to John F. Kennedy International Airport, and another passenger complained on Twitter that the airline played ukulele music during the emergency. “Hawaiian Airlines is still playing the ukulele/traditional singing soundtrack meant for boarding and deplaning, and I’ll tell ya, it’s not making anyone calmer,” she said.
UNITED STATES
One dead after train hits bus
One student was killed and two other individuals were injured after an east Texas school bus was hit by a train on Friday, authorities said. The Tyler Morning Telegraph reported that the collision took place at about 4pm, when the bus was at a train crossing in Athens, about 112km southeast of Dallas. At a news conference on Friday evening, Athens Police Chief Buddy Hill said that a 13-year-old male middle-school student was killed, adding that a nine-year-old girl in elementary school was injured and flown to a Dallas hospital, where she was in a critical, but stable condition. No other students were on the bus, the Athens school district said. The bus driver was also injured and taken to a hospital, where he was in a stable condition, Hill said. “My heart is broken for the families,” district Superintendent Blake Stiles said. The names of the two students and the bus driver were not immediately released. Authorities were still determining a cause of the collision. There were no wooden gate arms or warning lights at the train crossing where the collision took place, Hill 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