CANADA
McDonald’s serves detergent
A woman pregnant with her third child says she was served a cleaning agent at a McDonald’s restaurant instead of the latte she ordered. Sarah Douglas said this week that she was taking her son to a baseball tournament on Sunday morning in the Alberta town of Lethbridge when they stopped at the McDonald’s drive-thru for the coffee. When she took a sip she knew something was wrong and pulled over to spit it out. Douglas said she returned to the restaurant to complain and a staff member told her that two cleaning lines had been hooked up to the latte machine. Douglas then contacted Alberta Health Services. A spokeswoman for McDonald’s issued an apology on behalf of Dan Brown, the restaurant franchisee.
SPAIN
Uber licenses to be limited
Taxi drivers late on Wednesday ended a six-day national strike after the government agreed to limit licenses granted to online ride-hailing services such as Uber. For almost a week, thousands of taxi drivers across the country blocked major city streets with their cabs in protest against the services they claim work under less restrictive regulation, making it impossible to compete. The government agreed to pass new regulations in September that will guarantee a cap on licenses for the services at a ratio of just one permit for every 30 taxi permits. The enforced legislation would result in thousands of Uber and Cabify drivers being laid off as there are 9,000 permits granted to the online services compared with 70,000 taxi permits. Backed by funds such as Goldman Sachs and BlackRock and valued at more than US$70 billion, Uber has faced protests, bans and restrictions around the world as it challenges traditional taxi operators.
SWEDEN
Mountain shrinks in heat
This summer’s exceptionally hot weather has seen the south peak of Kebnekaise lose the crown as the country’s highest point. Instead, Kebnekaise’s north peak is now higher after soaring temperatures melted enough of the glacier that sits on top of the south peak to make the northern part of the mountain, which consists of rock rather than ice, higher. The south peak measured 2,097m above sea level on July 31, down from 2,101m on July 2, data from the Tarfala research station showed. The north peak is 2,096.8m high, and the research station estimates that it overtook the south peak as the highest point on Wednesday as the melting has continued. July was in many parts of the country the hottest on record, with severe drought and some of the worst forest fires the country has ever seen. The temperature last month was 3 to 5°C hotter than normal, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute said.
UNITED STATES
Flying tire kills driver
Authorities say a 64-year-old driver has been killed when his car was struck by a tire that flew off a private sanitation vehicle on the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn. Robert Martinez was heading east at about 6:40am on Wednesday when the tire came loose from the westbound sanitation vehicle, police said. It went over the center median and smashed his windshield. Martinez suffered severe head injuries and was pronounced dead at hospital, police said. The driver of the garbage truck remained at the scene. No charges were filed. Martinez was a building maintenance worker at New York Police Department headquarters.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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