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.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including