BELGIUM
Workers killed in collapse
Five construction workers were confirmed dead on Saturday, a day after a school construction site partially collapsed in Antwerp. The last two bodies were pulled out the rubble on Saturday afternoon, Antwerp’s fire department said, meaning that all the missing victims were now accounted for. King Philippe of Belgium visited the scene accompanied by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. Two of the dead were from Portugal and Romania, police told local media, while the nationality of the other dead workers was not clear. However, when three people were still missing, rescue workers had said they were looking for two more Portuguese and one Russian.
UNITED STATES
Man rages over cheese
An angry Florida man pulled a gun on a drive-thru worker because she forgot the cream cheese with his bagel, Miami Gardens Police said. The employee just happened to be the daughter of the police chief. Police said the man became angry at a Starbucks drive-thru when they messed up his order earlier this week. He returned to the window, screaming at the employee. She asked whether he had paid for the cream cheese, at which point he became enraged and pulled out a gun, according to an arrest report. Police Chief Delma Noel-Pratt told CBS4 that the experience traumatized her 23-year-old daughter. The chief’s daughter told police that the man did not point the gun at her, but that she feared he would hurt her if she did not give him the cream cheese.
MEXICO
At least 15 die in attacks
Gunmen aboard a number of vehicles on Saturday staged attacks in several neighborhoods in the city of Reynosa near the US border and at least 15 people died in clashes that caused widespread panic, police said. The Tamaulipas State agency coordinating security forces said in a statement that the attacks began in the early afternoon in several neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, which borders McAllen, Texas. The agency said one person died during an attack on police near a border bridge, but it was not clear if the others were shot in random attacks or were targeted. Authorities said they detained a person who had two women, apparently kidnapped, in the trunk of his car, and said they seized three vehicles.
SWITZERLAND
Shots for children planned
The country plans to allow children aged 12 to 15 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as next week, the government’s vaccine chief Christoph Berger said in an interview published yesterday by the Neue Zurcher Zeitung. The development comes two weeks after the country’s medicines regulators, Swissmedic, extended its temporary ordinary authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to include people in that age group. The drug regulator is separately considering Moderna’s application to extend the authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine in the country to 12 to 17-year-olds.
UNITED KINGDOM
Former speaker defects
Former House of Commons speaker John Bercow said he has left the Conservative Party to join the opposition Labour Party, launching a blistering attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In an interview with the Observer newspaper published yesterday, the former lawmaker said the Conservative Party under Johnson was “reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic.”
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
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