UNITED STATES
Zsa Zsa scoops ugly prize
A nine-year-old English bulldog was named the winner of this year’s World’s Ugliest Dog contest in the San Francisco Bay Area. Zsa Zsa won the title on Saturday night at the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma. The dog’s owner, Megan Brainard of Anoka, Minnesota, will receive US$1,500. Brainard found Zsa Zsa on a pet-finding site, according to the contest bio. Dogs in the annual competition, now in its 30th year, included a blackhead-covered Chinese crested-dachshund mutt, a bulldog mix with excess wrinkly skin and a Pekingese named Wild Thang.
Photo: AFP
IRAQ
New coalition formed
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday said they had agreed to a political coalition amid talks to form a new government after last month’s elections. Al-Sadr’s political bloc won the largest share of seats in parliament, and he had already joined in a coalition with the second-place bloc led by Hadi al-Amiri, a Shiite militia leader backed by Iran. Al-Abadi’s bloc came in third in the polls. The twin coalitions point to a return to a grand Shiite coalition, under the sway of Iran.
MALAYSIA
Anwar hospitalized
Former prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was taken to a hospital late on Saturday after complaining of back and shoulder pain. The 70-year-old was being treated following a trip to Turkey, said Fahmi Fadzil, a spokesman for Anwar’s People’s Justice Party. Anwar’s condition was stable, he said.
SOUTH KOREA
US military readies coffins
The US military has moved 100 wooden coffins to the Demilitarized Zone to prepare for Pyongyang’s returning of the remains of US soldiers who have been missing since the Korean War. Spokesman Colonel Chad Carroll on Saturday said 158 metal transfer cases were also sent to a US air base near Seoul, and would be used to send the remains home. It remains unclear when and how the transfer of remains will occur.
PAKISTAN
Local Taliban choose chief
Taliban militants chose a religious scholar as their new leader in place of Mullah Fazlullah, who ordered the assassination of Malala Yousafzai and was killed earlier this month in a US drone strike. Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, on Saturday said that the executive council of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan appointed Mufti Noor Wali Mahsud as its new chief and Mufti Mazhim, AKA Mufti Hafzullah, as his deputy. It was the group’s first confirmation that Fazlullah had been killed in the drone attack in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province.
MEXICO
Juarez day’s death toll: 14
At least 14 people were killed on Saturday in three shooting incidents in Juarez. In two of the attacks, men who had gathered to watch the World Cup match between Mexico and South Korea were shot by armed gunmen, killing 11 and injuring two. Three people were taken from a party early on Saturday morning and executed. The murders bring to 128 the number of people killed in Juarez this month.
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For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
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