AUSTRALIA
Victim donates to charity
A boy with dwarfism whose distress from bullying became a viral video is to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to charity rather than a trip to Disneyland. The clip of nine-year-old Quaden Bayles was watched millions of times and prompted US comedian Brad Williams to start a GoFundMe page that eventually raised almost US$475,000. Although the funds were meant to send Bayles and his mom to Disneyland, his aunt told NITV News that the money would be used for charities instead. “What kid wouldn’t want to go to Disneyland, especially if you have lived Quaden’s life,” she was quoted as saying. “But my sister said: ‘You know what, let’s get back to the real issue.’ This little fella has been bullied. How many suicides, black or white, in our society have happened due to bullying. We want the money to go to community organizations that really need it. They know what the money should be spent on.”
BELGIUM
Flight delay claim nixed
Air travelers cannot receive cash compensation if their flight is delayed by a passenger biting others and assaulting crew members, an adviser at the European Court of Justice said on Thursday. Such incidents were “extraordinary circumstances,” advocate general Priit Pikamae wrote in a non-binding opinion, a form of guidance that is normally followed by the court. A traveler flying from Brazil to Norway via Portugal in August 2017 sought 600 euros (U$663) compensation after his flight departed late. The plane had to be diverted to disembark a passenger biting and assaulting crew members, delaying the following outgoing flight. “A passenger biting other passengers and attacking the cabin crew trying to calm him down ... leading to a flight delay, falls under the concept of extraordinary circumstances,” Pikamae said. The court typically follows the opinions of its advocates general.
BELGIUM
Laced wine alert issued
Prosecutors have issued an alert after a woman died after taking a sip of wine from a bottle suspected of being used to transport the drug MDMA. The 41-year-old collapsed shortly after opening the French red to enjoy with a colleague after work. She took a sip from a glass, which left an unpleasant taste, and the intake was enough to give her a fatal dose of MDMA. The unnamed woman, from Puurs near Antwerp, died five days later in hospital. “[She] was 100 percent against drugs... We also do not understand where that bottle came from. She only drank one sip,” her sister told Het Nieuwsblad. Prosecutors in Antwerp confirmed that there was no link between the woman and drug use, and said there was evidence of tampering with the bottle’s cork. Drug traffickers have been known to use wine bottles to conceal drugs during transportation.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to