FRANCE
Death livestream blocked
Facebook has blocked a terminally ill French euthanasia campaigner from livestreaming his own death. Alain Cocq, who has been suffering for 34 years from a rare and incurable degenerative disease, said he would find another way to broadcast his death. He has stopped taking food, drink or medicine, and says he wants his death to be seen to help persuade French authorities to lift a ban on medically assisted suicide. “While we respect Alain’s decision to draw attention to this important issue, we are preventing live broadcasts on his account based on the advice of experts that the depiction of suicide attempts could be triggering and promote more self-harm,” Facebook said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Trump parade flounders
A Texas boat parade in support of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign ran into trouble on Saturday, as multiple vessels took on water or sank, authorities said. The Travis County Sheriff’s Office “responded to multiple calls involving boats in distress,” it wrote on Twitter. “Several boats did sink.” No injuries or medical emergencies were reported. “Some were taking on water, some were stalled, some were capsizing, it was all types of different things,” sheriff’s office spokeswoman Kristen Dark said. Photographs on Twitter showed boats flying “Trump 2020” flags in choppy water, likely caused by the large number of vessels moving closely together.
UNITED STATES
Harris distrusts Trump
Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said that she would not take President Donald Trump’s word alone on any potential coronavirus vaccine. In an interview excerpt broadcast by CNN on Saturday, Harris said that Trump had a track record of suppressing expert opinion about the COVID-19 pandemic. “I would not trust Donald Trump,” Harris said, saying she would be convinced of the efficacy of a vaccine only if someone credible were vouching for it as well. “He’s looking at an election coming up ... and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend he can be a leader on this issue when he’s not,” she said.
UNITED STATES
Fox reporter must go: Trump
President Donald Trump has demanded that Fox News fire its national security correspondent after she confirmed claims that he had disparaged the military. Trump came under fire after The Atlantic magazine reported that he had called marines killed in action in World War I “losers” and “suckers” in connection with a November 2018 visit to France when he skipped a visit to a US military cemetery. “Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!” Trump tweeted late on Friday. “I can tell you that my sources are unimpeachable,” Griffin said on-air on Saturday on her network. “My sources are not anonymous to me and I doubt they are anonymous to the president.”
UNITED STATES
Protesters lob fire bombs
Protesters in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday night threw fire bombs at police and at least one person was injured, police said, on the 100th day of demonstrations in the Oregon city over racial injustice and police brutality. Police described what they called “tumultuous and violent conduct” by protesters on the city’s Southeast Stark Street. “There were hundreds at the beginning [of Saturday night’s demonstrations]. Arrests have been made, yes,” police said in a statement.
JAPAN
Snap elections likely
The country’s next prime minister could call a snap general election shortly after taking office next week, a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) said yesterday, Kyodo News reported. “Seeking a public mandate with a new Cabinet that is fresh and enjoys high public support is one option on timing,” LDP General Council chief Shunichi Suzuki said on a TV program, Kyodo reported. After forming a Cabinet, the new leader could immediately dissolve the lower house and call a snap election, Suzuki said. The LDP is to elect a new leader on Monday next week to replace Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who on Aug. 28 abruptly announced his intention to resign. The lower house of parliament is expected to convene on Wednesday next week to choose a new prime minister, which is virtually guaranteed to be the LDP president because of the party’s majority in the chamber. Yoshihide Suga, Abe’s chief Cabinet secretary and long-time loyal supporter, is the frontrunner to win the leadership vote and become the next prime minister.
AUSTRIA
Man breaks ice cube record
An Austrian man on Saturday beat his own record for the longest full-body contact with ice cubes. Josef Koeberl managed to stay 2 hours, 30 minutes and 57 seconds inside a custom-made glass box filled up to his shoulders with ice cubes. More than 200kg of ice cubes were needed to fill up the box, after Koeberl stepped inside wearing nothing but swim trunks. To fight the “wave of pain” caused by the freezing temperatures, Koeberl said he was trying to focus on positive emotions. “I’m fighting the pain by visualizing and drawing on positive emotions so I can dampen this wave of pain,” Koeberl told reporters. “That way I can endure.” A small crowd of people watched on as Koeberl beat his own record from last year by 30 minutes on the town square of Melk in Lower Austria. After being taken out of the ice box by helpers he said that the sun felt “really great” on his back.
NORTH KOREA
Kim tours storm-hit area
The country’s leader Kim Jong-un on Saturday toured coastal areas hit by a typhoon, and ordered 12,000 core party members to join the recovery effort, state media reported yesterday. State-run television KRT carried footage of Kim convening a meeting with officials and walking in the typhoon-hit area. More than 1,000 houses were destroyed in coastal areas of South and North Hamgyong provinces, the Korean Central News Agency said, adding that farmland and some public buildings had been inundated.
HONG KONG
‘Mulan’ boycott urged
Democracy advocates are calling for a boycott of Disney’s live-action Mulan remake, citing a social media post from the lead actress in support of the territory’s police. Pro-democracy advocates from Hong Kong to Thailand highlighted a social media post last year by Liu Yifei (劉亦菲), who stars as the titular character, that voiced support for the police. They are urging people to avoid the film, which launched on the Disney+ streaming platform on Friday. “Because Disney kowtows to Beijing, and because Liu Yifei openly and proudly endorses police brutality in Hong Kong, I urge everyone who believes in human rights to #BoycottMulan,” democracy advocate Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) tweeted.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
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