LEBANON
Radioactive pads seized
The Ministry of Finance said customs authorities at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International airport have confiscated 30 boxes containing sanitary towels with radioactive material. A ministry statement says Minister of Finance Ali Hassan Khalil ordered the towels turned over to authorities who handle nuclear materials. They are later to be returned to their country of origin. The statement gave no further details and did not say if authorities suspected criminal wrongdoing. An airport official said the 545kg of sanitary towels were sent to the nation from China via Dubai.
LIBERIA
Ebola infection reported
The nation on Friday said a person in the capital, Monrovia, has tested positive for Ebola virus disease, more than a month after the last new case of the infection was registered. The nation that was hit hardest at the peak of the deadly epidemic has seen more than 4,000 deaths, but was at an advanced stage in its recovery and was expecting to be declared Ebola-free by the middle of next month, officials said. “A woman has been confirmed as an Ebola patient... This is a new case after we have gone more than 27 days without a single case. It is a setback,” government spokesman Lewis Brown said. The WHO earlier this month announced that no new case of the often deadly virus had been registered in Liberia since Feb. 19. It was not immediately clear where the new patient became infected, as all contacts associated with the last known chain of transmission have completed the 21-day observation period, according to the WHO. Surveillance and early warning systems detected 125 suspected cases in the week to Sunday last week, but none tested positive for Ebola.
UNITED STATES
UAE space deal agreed
Washington and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have agreed to work toward greater civil and national security space cooperation after officials from the two countries met in Washington last week, the Department of State said on Friday. The officials reviewed “a broad list of potential areas of space cooperation,” department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement. Rathke added that the talks focused on issues including space policy and regulatory developments, space security, space science cooperation, weather monitoring and the use of satellite-based applications.
GAZA
Lion cubs stars of family
Two lion cubs have become star members of a family living in a refugee camp as a result of the weak economy in the war-battered Palestinian territory. A cash-starved zoo in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, sold the cubs to Saadi Jamal, a Palestinian Authority security employee who has taken them home — to the delight of his four children and their neighbors. For the past 10 weeks, “they’ve been living in the house like members of the family,” he said. The children in the three-room apartment and their local friends “play all day long with the cubs.” However, the extended family comes at a price. They gobble up 0.5kg of meat a day, a tall order in Israeli-blockaded Gaza where prices have soared since a devastating war in July and August last year against the Jewish state. “Once they turn five months,” Jamal plans to make some money by leasing the cubs out to lunar parks, seaside resorts and restaurants.
UNITED STATES
Four police let go for racism
Three Florida police officers have been fired and a fourth resigned following an exchange of racist texts and an offensive video, officials said on Friday. The episode comes at a critical moment in the US as officers across the nation have come under fire for use of excessive force and allegedly targeting African Americans. “All four officers’ conduct involved racist text messages exchanged among themselves and former police officers,” Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Frank Adderley said. An investigation was first initiated in October last year, at which point the four officers were dismissed from their normal duties. Since then, one resigned and the other three were fired, Adderley said, announcing the results of the investigation.
MEXICO
Woman dies aged 127
A woman has died at the age of 127 in western Mexico, a government agency that verified her age said on Friday. Leandra Becerra was born in Tamaulipas State on Aug. 31, 1887, and died on Thursday morning at her home in Zapopan, Jalisco, the National System for Integral Family Development, or DIF, said. Becerra has not been included on lists of the world’s oldest people, because she had not previously had official documentation. The DIF did not give the cause of death. Her grandson, 70-year-old Samuel Alvear, said she used to regale him with stories about the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, when she would make tortillas for the soldiers. “She met Pancho Villa,” he said she had told him. Guadalupe Diaz, the head of the metropolitan center for the elderly in Zapopan, said Becerra had five children, who had all died, adding that by 2011, she had 161 descendants.
UNITED STATES
Victims get false warnings
A technical glitch on Friday evening caused an Oregon Department of Corrections notification system to issue thousands of alerts to crime victims that the perpetrators would soon be released, according to officials and the Oregonian newspaper. The department said in a statement that its Victim Information Notification Everyday, or VINE system, malfunctioned during routine maintenance sending “numerous notifications to victims in error.” The statement added that contractor Appriss was working to repair the problem and would send out an alert to everyone who received a false notification. The system allows victims and members of the public to track scheduled release dates for inmates of county jails and state adult and youth correctional facilities, as well as those who are on community supervision. Oregon launched the service in 2001, becoming the 11th state to do so, the statement added.
ARGENTINA
Four charged in attack
Four people have been charged in an attack on Israeli tourists in a popular area of Patagonia, an owner of the hostel where the assault happened said on Friday. Judge Guido Sebastian Otranto charged three men with assault, robbery and resisting arrest, hostel owner Yoav Pollac told reporters. The fourth was charged with covering up the attack by taking objects that were stolen and hiding them in his apartment. Pollac said the attack happened on Jan. 19 at the Onda Azul hostel in the tourist area of Lago Puelo, about 1,700km south of Buenos Aires. It began with gunshots in the air and rock throwing, and then the assailants entered the hostel and beat several Israeli tourists while making anti-Semitic slurs. In total, a dozen people, including police officers, were injured. The suspect’s identities were not released.
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
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
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