UNITED STATES
Dog eats 19 baby pacifiers
A Boston veterinary hospital got quite a surprise when a family brought in their bulldog after he stopped eating. The Angell Animal Medical Center found 19 baby pacifiers in the dog’s stomach. It started in April when the Wellesley family noticed that their three-year-old dog, Mortimer, started getting nauseous before meals. His owner, Emily Shanahan, brought Mortimer to the vet, who prescribed medicine to take care of the issue. However, it did not help and Mortimer eventually stopped eating entirely. Shanahan went to Angell, where they took an X-ray and discovered the pacifiers. Vets think Mortimer had been taking the pacifiers from Shanahan’s two children over the course of months. The pacifiers were removed using a medical scope that did not require surgery.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Wimbledon Prowler’ jailed
The notorious “Wimbledon Prowler,” a prolific burglar suspected of hundreds of break-ins in the plush London suburb, was on Friday jailed for 14 years, having finally been caught. Through meticulous planning, Astrit Kapaj spent more than a decade defying sophisticated security systems to steal a fortune from houses in the district, also home to the Wimbledon tennis championships. However, a major police operation eventually caught up with Kapaj — a 43-year-old Albanian who worked in a fish-and-chips shop 260km away. “You are a prolific, persistent and professional burglar,” judge Peter Lodder said as he sentenced him at Kingston Crown Court.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Tourist deaths ‘normal’
The deaths of eight American tourists in the country this year are not part of a mysterious wave of fatalities, but a medically and statistically normal phenomenon that has been lumped together by the US media, Tourism Minister Francisco Javier Garcia said on Friday. Autopsies show the tourists died of natural causes, he told reporters. With about 3.2 million US tourists visiting the country last year, he said that it is not unusual for eight people to die while on vacation over any six-month period.
UNITED STATES
Jagger on tour after surgery
Mick Jagger on Friday swaggered back to the stage in his first concert after undergoing heart surgery in April as the Rolling Stones launched a delayed North American tour. The veteran British band opened its No Filter tour in Chicago at the city’s 61,500-seat Soldier Field stadium, after delaying the 17-date tour to allow for Jagger’s medical treatment. Opening to a sold-out crowd, the band started with its classic hit Street Fighting Man as the Stones frontman, dressed in skinny black jeans and a black-and-white jacket, strutted across the stage, singing and pumping his fist.
UNITED STATES
Cocaine bust largest ever
Federal authorities have upped the amount of cocaine they seized from a ship at the Philadelphia port to more than 15,876kg, making it the largest cocaine haul in the history of Customs, authorities said on Friday. They put the street value of the drugs at US$1.1 billion. Laid end to end, the bricks of cocaine would stretch just more than 3km, said Casey Durst, director of field operations in the Customs and Border Protection Baltimore field office. The investigation has resulted in the arrests of six crew members, all of whom are due for federal court hearings tomorrow.
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