CANADA
‘Hero’ to be ambassador
A sergeant-at-arms hailed as a hero for killing the gunman who stormed parliament last year is to become the nation’s ambassador to Ireland, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on Thursday. Kevin Vickers, a 58-year-old Irish-Canadian, has been feted by world leaders ever since the Oct. 22 attack in Ottawa. The white-haired former Mountie likely saved countless lives by shooting Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who had just killed a soldier posted at the nearby National War Memorial and then charged into parliament with a handgun and opened fire. “Kevin Vickers has shown profound leadership and a dedication to the security of Canada and its national institutions,” Harper said in a statement. “His extensive experience working with Parliament, as well as his bravery and integrity, will serve to deepen close bilateral relations between Canada and Ireland in the years ahead.”
PERU
Fujimori jailed for graft
A court on Thursday sentenced former president Alberto Fujimori, already in jail for a government-backed massacre, to eight years in prison on charges of embezzling state funds to manipulate the media. The sentence has only symbolic effect since jail time does not accumulate in Peru, where prisoners serve only the longest of their concurrent sentences. Fujimori is currently jailed on a 25-year sentence over the killing of 25 people by a government-backed death squad in the course of the nation’s war against the Maoist Shining Path rebel group. Fujimori was also ordered to pay US$1 million in civil damages for ordering funds diverted from the Armed Forces and National Intelligence Service to newspapers to discredit his political opponents. Fujimori, 76, said he would appeal.
UNITED STATES
Facebook aids hiker rescue
Officials say an emergency dispatcher in training used Facebook to locate a Northern California hiker critically injured after falling 45m down a cliff while hiking. Ryan Pritchard was hiking with his son in the remote Blue Ridge Loop Trail when he slipped and fell. His 11-year-old called for help, but the phone call got cut off before he could tell dispatchers where his father was. Dispatchers were hitting a dead-end trying to make contact when trainee Breanna Martinez decided to do a search for Pritchard on Facebook. She told CBS13 in Sacramento that the very first post on Pritchard’s page was a picture of his two sons standing in front of Lake Berryessa and the comment “Hiking the Blue Ridge Trail today.” That post helped bring rescue crews to the area in time to get Pritchard out before sunset.
UNITED STATES
US$300,000 for Elvis record
An acetate recording of the ballad My Happiness, the first song Elvis Presley ever recorded, was sold at an auction for US$300,000. An undisclosed buyer placed the winning bid on Thursday at Graceland, the museum and tourist attraction that was Presley’s former home. Bidding began at US$50,000. Presley recorded it in 1953 at Sun Records, the Memphis studio operated by Sam Phillips. Presley, then 18, paid US$4 for the recording. As the story goes, Presley left Sun and went to the home of friend Ed Leek to listen to it. However, Presley, whose family did not have a record player, left the record there. Leek had kept the record and after he and his wife died, their niece inherited it. She contacted Graceland, and it was offered for auction.
MYANMAR
Four killed in landslide
Authorities said at least four people have been killed in a landslide at a jade mine in Phakant, Kachin State, about 960km from the main city of Yangon. Local government official Than Shwe said a rescue mission in the mining town was called off late on Thursday after a search team recovered four bodies, including those of two women. He said heavy rain caused the landslide on Tuesday night.
PHILIPPINES
Man dies in religious parade
One man has died during an annual Roman Catholic procession in Manila. The major religious festival in is also a prelude to a much larger turnout expected during next week’s visit by Pope Francis. Manila Vice Mayor Francisco Moreno said one volunteer accompanying the statue of the Black Nazarene being paraded died of a heart attack early yesterday. The devotees believe the centuries-old black statue of Jesus Christ carrying a cross is a source of miraculous powers that could cure ailments and provide good health and fortune.
JAPAN
Objects found in burger
A woman has claimed she found fragments identified as “dental material” in a McDonald’s hamburger, the company said yesterday — the latest in a series of food contamination woes for the fast-food giant. The claim comes two days after McDonald’s held a news conference acknowledging that several foreign objects had been found in its food, including a human tooth in a container of french fries at an outlet in Osaka. In television footage aired yesterday, the unidentified woman told the Asahi network that she found three tiny fragments of what looked like teeth in a burger she bought at a McDonald’s in Kushiro in September.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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