UNITED STATES
Teen with BB gun killed
Police on Saturday shot and killed a 15-year-old student after he pointed a BB gun at them in a high-school parking lot, authorities said. The Torrey Pines High School student called 911 shortly before 3:30am to ask officers to check on the welfare of an unarmed boy in front of the school, according to a police statement. When two officers arrived, they spotted a youth in the front parking lot, but as they got out of their patrol cars, he pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at an officer, police said. The officers drew their guns and ordered him to drop the weapon, but instead he began to walk toward an officer, they said. Both officers fired, hitting him several times, police said, adding that they performed first aid and summoned paramedics, but the teen was pronounced dead at a hospital.
MEXICO
Rights advocate found dead
A human rights and environmental campaigner, apparently from the US, was killed in a state plagued by organized crime, the authorities said on Saturday. The body of the unnamed man was found in a home in the city of Teocelo in Veracruz state, the state prosecutors’ office said. “On the man’s body, injuries produced by gunfire can be seen on the right side of the cranium,” it said. The man’s initials were given, but his name was withheld. However, local residents told reporters that the man was Gordon Strom, a US national who had been living in Teocelo for years teaching about environmental issues and human rights.
TANZANIA
Bus crash kills 32 students
A bus crash that claimed the lives of 32 primary-school students, two teachers and the driver was likely caused by speeding, police said. “Preliminary investigations show that the accident is due to speeding,” regional police chief Charles Mkumbo told the state-run Tanzania Broadcasting Corp late on Saturday. The accident happened earlier that day when the bus went off the road and into the Marera River gorge in Karatu District near the northern city of Arusha where the children were attending Lucky Vincent Primary School.
DENMARK
Brewer puts the ‘P’ in pilsner
A brewery is drawing on 50,000 liters of urine collected from the largest music festival in Northern Europe in producing a novelty beer aimed at the more adventurous drinker. The beer — named “Pisner” — contains no human waste, but is produced from fields of malting barley fertilized with human urine rather than manure.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
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