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.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
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