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.
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
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
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
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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