LIBYA
IS claims deadly attack
The Islamic State (IS) group on Saturday claimed responsibility for an attack on a town in the southern desert that killed nine people and in which several people were kidnapped, according to a resident. The militant group, which made its claim in a statement on its news agency Amaq, said 29 people had been either killed or wounded in Friday’s attack. A military source said the assailants had occupied a police station in the oasis town of Tazerbo, north of Kufra, until residents expelled them. A resident said nine people had been killed in all and 10 wounded.
UNITED KINGDOM
Director Nicolas Roeg dies
Nicolas Roeg, a director of provocative and otherworldly films who gave Mick Jagger and David Bowie enduring screen roles, has died. He was 90. The British director of Don’t Look Now and many other films died on Friday night, his son, Nicolas Roeg Jr, told the Britain’s Press Association. “He was a genuine dad,” he said on Saturday. “He just had his 90th birthday in August.” During the 1970s, Roeg sent Jenny Agutter and his son Luc Roeg on the Australian Outback odyssey Walkabout, and gave Jagger a big-screen role in the thriller Performance.
INDIA
Police face off with tribe
Police officers had a nervous long-distance face-off with the tribe that killed a US missionary, in their latest bid to locate his body on a remote island. The police team, which took a boat just off North Sentinel island on Saturday, spotted men from the Sentinelese tribe on the beach where John Allen Chau was last seen, the region’s police chief Dependra Pathak said. Using binoculars, officers — in a police boat about 400m from the shore — saw the men armed with bows and arrows, the weapons reportedly used by the isolated tribe to kill Chau as he shouted Christian phrases at them. “They stared at us and we were looking at them,” Pathak said. The boat withdrew to avoid any chance of a confrontation.
UNITED STATES
Deli owner thwarts robbery
A deli owner whipped out a machete and chased away a would-be robber who has been charged with holding up five New York businesses in the past two months. Ana Guevara told Newsday that she now realizes she and her husband could have been killed in the confrontation at Deli and Pupuseria in Huntington Station on Long Island on Wednesday. Manuel Guevara said suspect Carlos Garcia had a fake gun. The 35-year-old Garcia was charged on Thursday in robberies at two cellphone stores, two delis and a laundromat. A suspected getaway driver, 53-year-old Angela Reilly, was also arrested.
UNITED STATES
Dog treks nearly 2,000km
Eighteen months after Sinatra the brown-and-white husky disappeared from his home in New York, he ended up wandering in a Florida neighborhood, where 13-year-old Rose Verrill took him in. It turned out Sinatra once belonged to 16-year-old Zion Willis, who died in a gun accident in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. He was to be reunited with her family in Baltimore yesterday. No one knows how the dog traveled 1,931km from New York to Seffner, which is near Tampa, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Sinatra was a 14th birthday gift for Zion. One day a year-and-a-half after Zion’s death, the dog left and never came home. It was a tragic loss for Zion’s grieving parents.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly