FRANCE
Refugee killed by train
A refugee was killed overnight on Thursday after being hit by a freight train on the site of the Channel tunnel near Calais, firefighters said, taking the death toll there among people trying to reach Britain to 16 since June. The body was found by firefighters alongside a train platform in Coquelles. The force of the impact made it impossible to immediately identify the victim’s sex, age or nationality.
SOUTH AFRICA
ICC extends deadline
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has given the nation more time to explain why it failed to arrest Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is accused by the court of war crimes, when he visited the country in June. As a court signatory, Pretoria is obliged to implement warrants from the court. However, when al-Bashir visited for an African Union summit, the government refused to arrest him, and allowed him to leave the nation in violation of a domestic court order. The government said it needed more time to respond. Pretoria should report back to the ICC on the progress of legal proceedings no later than Dec. 31, the ICC said in a statement.
CHINA
Corpse theft brings arrests
Police have detained three people suspected of stealing a corpse to sell as a bride in the ancient rite of ghost weddings, which join single people who died for a belated marriage in the afterlife. Xinhua News Agency said the main suspect had heard about the death of a young woman in a nearby village in Shanxi Province and thought of selling the corpse to relatives of a single dead man, citing police in Ruicheng County. Xinhua said the three suspects pretended to be relatives of the woman and negotiated a sale price of 25,000 yuan (US$4,000) with a buyer. However, while raiding a tomb for the body on Saturday last week, they were caught by villagers.
DENMARK
Zoo dissects lion cub
Zoo staff on Thursday dissected a nine-month-old lion cub in front of an audience of enthralled young children, as a social media storm about the gruesome display raged outside. Some of the youngsters held their noses as zookeepers methodically sliced up the cat.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bridge ruling upheld
Legions of bridge players in Britain might feel they have been dealt a rotten hand after a court decision endorsed an earlier ruling that the popular card game is not a sport. A High Court judge on Thursday backed Sport England’s assertion that bridge is not a sport because it does not involve physical activity.
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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