UNITED STATES
Ship to help Colombia
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that the Pentagon will send a hospital ship to Colombia to help cope with strains on medical systems caused by the Venezuelan refugee crisis. Mattis said Colombian President Ivan Duque embraced the proposal during talks on Friday morning in Bogota. Some details of the plan for dispatching the USNS Comfort from Norfolk, Virginia, have not yet been worked out. Mattis said the ship would probably visit other South American countries also feeling the effects of the refugee problem.
UNITED STATES
Radio host shocked
A Wisconsin sports talk radio host had a good reason when listeners heard dead air this week: He had just been struck by lightning. Bill Michaels was hit on Thursday in Eau Claire as he hosted his show from the patio of a golf club as thunderstorms moved in. Michaels told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he was sitting at a metal-mesh table when he was jolted by lightning. He said it burned his arms and fingers and blew out his shoe. Michaels got up, said he could not finish his show and went to a hospital. His wife, Sherry Michaels, said on Facebook that her husband spent four hours in a hospital before being released with a bad headache and some numbness in his extremities.
CANADA
Woman charged over shove
A woman accused of injuring her 16-year-old friend when she pushed the teen off a bridge in Washington state has been charged with reckless endangerment following a shove captured on video that went viral. The KGW television station on Friday reported that charging documents filed by the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s office say Taylor Smith created “a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury” to Jordan Holgerson, who was pushed off a bridge on Aug. 7 at Moulton Falls, northeast of Vancouver, Washington, and fell 18m. She sustained injuries ranging from broken ribs to punctured lungs. New video obtained by NBC News shows a woman urging Holgerson to jump. In it a woman tells Holgerson to “just go” and “I’m going to push you.” Video that was posted earlier on YouTube and later removed shows Holgerson standing on the bridge with friends. Then a woman is seen forcefully pushing her off the span.
GEORGIA
Cubes solved under water
An 18-year-old student on Friday solved six Rubik’s Cubes under water in one breath in a bid to set a new Guinness World Record. Vako Marchelashvili was submerged in a glass tank for just over 1 minute, 44 seconds as he flipped, turned and solved the cubes in front of a crowd at the Gino Paradise aqua park in Tbilisi. He said he had been preparing for the challenge for six months, training several hours a day. “I trained a lot planning to break a record and to ensure my safety, because even a small mistake could be dangerous and life-altering,” Marchelashvili said afterward. “I think my result will stay as a record for a long time. I hope to break many other records.” After observing Marchelashvili’s attempt, the Georgian Records Federation issued a diploma confirming his result. The evidence is to be sent to the Guinness World Records headquarters for verification. The current underwater record of five cubes was set by Anthony Brooks in New Jersey in the US in August 2014, according to the Guinness World Record Web site.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
INSURGENT ACTION: A local independence movement in Balochistan, alleged by Pakistan’s government to be backed by India, claimed responsibility for the strike A suicide bomber detonated an vehicle-borne IED near a railway as a passenger train passed through the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, killing at least 23 people and wounding over 70, officials said. The explosion caused two of the train cars to overturn and catch fire, according to footage shared online. The attack happened in an area where security forces are usually stationed, badly damaging several nearby buildings and smashing more than a dozen vehicles parked along the road, according to witnesses and images circulating on social media. Doctors at local hospitals said they had received the wounded, with 20 in critical
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