EGYPT
Car bomb wounds police
A car bomb wounded six policemen yesterday as it exploded in front of a police building in Cairo, the Ministry of the Interior said, the latest in a wave of militant attacks that has rocked the country. The powerful blast in northern Cairo’s Shubra District came in the middle of the night, a journalist said. The blast made a wide crater near the four-story building, shattered its windows and destroyed a major part of the front portion of a surrounding wall, a correspondent reported from the site.
? TURKEY
Election date proposed
The Higher Election Board has proposed Nov. 1 as a possible date for early elections after the failure of attempts to form a coalition government following June 7 polls, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The proposal, presented to political parties before a final decision is made, came three days ahead of Sunday’s deadline for forming a new government. The election board is set to determine an exact date for elections after the parties give their opinions, Anatolia said.
SOUTH KOREA
Ex-PM’s conviction upheld
The nation’s first female prime minister, Han Myung-sook, is to be sent to prison after the Supreme Court upheld her bribery conviction, court officials said yesterday. The court said it had rejected the appeal by the 71-year-old Han, who was sentenced to two years in prison for taking kickbacks from a businessman in a 2013 ruling by the Seoul High Court. Han has avoided jail since 2013 while she appealed the prison sentence. Supreme Court officials said their ruling is final.
AUSTRALIA
Actress found guilty of abuse
Veteran actress Maggie Kirkpatrick, who played a violent and sadistic warden nicknamed “The Freak” in a cult soap opera set in a women’s prison, was convicted yesterday of molesting a 14-year-old psychiatric hospital patient in her home more than 30 years ago. The series was known as Prisoner in Australia, and Prisoner: Cell Block H or Caged Women overseas. Kirkpatrick, 74, had pleaded not guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates Court to two counts of indecently assaulting the young fan in 1984 and one count of gross indecency.
SPAIN
Axing of US singer slammed
The government has condemned a reggae festival’s decision to boot a Jewish-American singer from the line-up after he declined to state his position on a Palestinian state. Matisyahu, who fuses reggae and hip-hop with Jewish influences in his songs, had been due to perform at the weeklong Rototom SunSplash festival, one of Europe’s largest reggae festivals in Benicassim on Saturday. However, a local branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement accused Matisyahu of being anti-Palestinian and a “Zionist” who supports the practice of “apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
UNITED STATES
Spacesuit work Web-funded
The Smithsonian’s first shot at online crowdfunding ended on Wednesday after raising a hefty US$719,779 to restore the spacesuit that Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon. A total of 9,477 people contributed to the month-long Kickstarter “Reboot the Suit” campaign, which surpassed its US$500,000 goal on July 24.
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
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
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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