RUSSIA
Cosmonaut sets record
Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, now aboard the International Space Station, has broken the record for total time in space by spending more than two years in orbit during his career. At 1:42am Moscow time on Monday, Padalka, the mission commander, broke cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev’s record of 803 days, nine hours and 41 minutes. Padalka is due to return to Earth on Sept. 11. On June 21, while in orbit, he celebrated his 57th birthday.
FRANCE
Poisoning charges filed
A woman was on Monday charged with seducing and killing an elderly man and poisoning three others. Patricia Dagorn, who is in her 50s, is serving a five-year jail sentence for theft, fraud and kidnapping concerning an 88-year-old widowed teacher. A source in the new probe said she was taken from prison to be charged with “poisoning with premeditation” in the first case in 2011 and murder for a second death the same year in the city of Nice. In the case for which Dagorn was jailed in 2013, police found Valium and methadone at the home of her victim, a retired teacher identified as Robert. Robert told reporters at the time: “I almost died for three days of love.”
FRANCE
US spied on officials, firms
The US wiretapped two of the nation’s economy ministers and spied on the country’s largest companies, local media reported citing WikiLeaks documents, just days after it emerged the US had spied on three of the country’s leaders. Pierre Moscovici, former minister of the economy under former president Francois Hollande, and Francois Baroin, minister for budget and then for the economy under former president Nicholas Sarkozy, were both reportedly targeted by the US National Security Agency. The newspaper Liberation late on Monday said the US agency had spied on “almost all of the CAC 40” index of largest listed firms.
UNITED STATES
Sugary drinks deadly: study
Sodas and other sugary drinks may cause up to 184,000 deaths a year worldwide, according to a study published on Monday in the journal Circulation. The report analyzed the global risks of death due to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancers linked to the consumption of sugary drinks. Researchers estimated that about 133,000 people died from diabetes due to the consumption of what the report called “sugar-sweetened beverages.” About 45,000 died globally from cardiovascular diseases arising from sugary drinks and 6,450 people died from cancers linked to the beverages, researchers estimated. Mexico had the highest death rate due to sugary drinks with a rate of 450 deaths per 1 million adults, the report said.
CANADA
Dismemberer seeks dates
A man sentenced to life in prison for killing and dismembering his Chinese lover and mailing body parts to schools and political parties has joined a matchmaking Web site for inmates. Luka Magnotta’s profile was posted on Sunday on Canadian Inmates Connect with two photos of the former stripper and prostitute in an unbuttoned white shirt. He was convicted in December last year of first-degree murder for the 2012 killing of university student Jun Lin (林俊) in Montreal. Magnotta filmed some of Lin’s dismemberment, posted the video online and mailed body parts to the Ottawa offices of two political parties, as well as to schools in British Columbia. Magnotta’s ad does not mention his specific conviction.
CHINA
CCP recruitment down
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recruited almost 15 percent fewer new members last year amid hopes that better-qualified candidates will expand its guiding role in society. Accounting for deaths and other losses, membership expanded by 1.1 million members, or 1.3 percent, last year 4 to a total of 87.79 million, the party’s Organization Department said late on Monday in a statement on its Web site. An additional 56,000 party units were added in offices, companies and other organizations for a total of 4.36 million nationwide. However, recruitment of new members fell by 14.6 percent to just over 2 million, or 351,000 fewer than in 2013, the party said. The figures were released ahead of the 94th anniversary of the party’s establishment today.
AFGHANISTAN
Truck bombing kills two
A suicide truck bomb in Helmand Province yesterday killed two civilians and wounded more than 40, officials said. The attacker detonated a truck loaded with explosives at the gate of the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. Provincial police spokesman Farid Ahmad Obaid said all of the casualties were civilians. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, President Ashraf Ghani yesterday nominated a female judge to sit on the Supreme Court in an unprecedented move that has angered some Islamic conservatives. Anisa Rasouli, the head of the Afghan Women Judges Association and a former juvenile court judge, was the only female nominated to the nine-member bench after the announcement was delayed due to opposition by a group of Islamic conservatives earlier this month. “I’m proud to announce that for the very first time I have nominated a woman to the Supreme Court,” Ghani told a gathering of diplomats and women’s rights activists. “Appointing a woman to the Supreme Court does not alter the judicial system. We do have full support of the Ulema [Islamic scholars] for it.”
AUSTRALIA
Smoking ban sparks riot
Hundreds of inmates at a maximum security prison in Melbourne yesterday rioted, forcing the evacuation of prison staff, as a protest against a smoking ban at the facility spun out of control. Television footage from the prison in Ravenhall showed prisoners with their faces covered, carrying sticks as makeshift weapons, while smoke was also seen. As many as 300 inmates were involved, the Australian Broadcasting Corp said. The smoking ban, being imposed at prisons across the state, was due to take effect at Ravenhall yesterday.
JAPAN
Solar plane still aloft
The Solar Impulse 2 was high above the Pacific Ocean yesterday, more than a quarter of the way to Hawaii after leaving Nagoya, the mission Web site showed. The solar-powered plane has 6,136 more kilometers to go to reach Hawaii. “Enjoying every moment of this flight. Getting to this point has been challenging,” Swiss pilot Andri Borschberg tweeted.
LIBERIA
New Ebola fatality reported
A teenager has died of Ebola in the first recorded case since the country was declared free of the virus on May 9, Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said yesterday. “A 17-year-old corpse was tested positive for Ebola virus. This took place in Margibi County. There is no need to panic. The corpse has been buried and our contact tracing has started work,” Nyenswah said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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