UNITED STATES
‘True Blood’ actor dies at 39
Nelsan Ellis, an actor best known for his role in the vampire series True Blood, has died at 39 following complications from heart failure, his manager told CNN. His portrayal of Lafayette, a gay cook and medium, helped him spring onto the acting scene after his character became a favorite of fans of the HBO drama, which ran from 2008 to 2014.
UNITED STATES
Self-help author dies
Spencer Johnson, whose book Who Moved My Cheese? has sold 25 million copies and became a business and self-help phenomenon, has died. Johnson’s executive assistant Nancy Casey on Saturday said that he died on Monday of complications from pancreatic cancer. Who Moved My Cheese? is a slim, 94-page fable on the need to embrace change that was derived from a story Johnson had told at parties and used in speeches.
CANADA
Trudeau defends payment
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday defended his government’s apology and multimillion-dollar payment to a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who pleaded guilty to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan. The deal with Omar Khadr’s lawyers was based on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that Canadian officials violated his rights at the US base on Cuba, and Trudeau said that when the government violates anyone’s constitutional rights it has to pay. “The charter of rights and freedoms protects all Canadians, every one of us, even when it is uncomfortable,” Trudeau told reporters at the G20 leaders’ summit in Hamburg, Germany.
GAZA STRIP
Power outage hits Gaza
Power supplies have taken a fresh hit in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, with authorities on Saturday accusing the rival Palestinian Authority of blocking fuel payments to Egypt from going through banks. The electricity authority said two of the three generators at Gaza’s only power plant were offline because “the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah stopped all the financial transactions through Palestinian banks to Egypt to buy fuel. This led to the stopping of fuel [deliveries] two days ago from Egypt.” A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah, Tarek Rishmawi, said that “the main reason for the worsening situation in Gaza is Hamas as they rejected the initiative of [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas to end the split” between Palestinian factions. He did not confirm or deny the allegations of blocking fuel payments.
UNITED STATES
KKK protests statue removal
A few dozen Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members and supporters on Saturday shouted “white power” at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they protested against a city council decision to remove a statute honoring Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The group was guarded by scores of police and outnumbered by hundreds of counter-protesters who waved signs denouncing racism. Anti-KKK protesters raised their voices in chants and shouts, drowning out speeches from the white supremacists, live video feeds on social media showed. There were no initial reports of violence at the rally that lasted less than an hour. Police later fired tear gas canisters when some protesters refused orders to disperse. Twenty-three people were arrested, but officials could not confirm their affiliations.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
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