BANGLADESH
Crowds flock to see tiny cow
Hundreds of people are ignoring COVID-19 restrictions and flocking to a farm near Dhaka to see a cow that its keepers say is the world’s shortest. The miniature cow, named Rani, is 51cm tall and 66cm long. It weighs 26kg and is so small it can be carried around. The managers of the farm where it is kept say they have applied to Guinness World Records to certify Rani as the world’s shortest cow. “We are very confident that this will be very smallest one,” Shikor Agro Industries executive Mohammad Salim said. The title is held by Manikyam, a cow from the Indian state of Kerala who was 61cm tall when it made it to the record books in 2014, the Guinness World Records Web site says. “Many people are coming from different places to see the mysterious cow, the smallest cow in the world, so I also have to be here to see the cow,” said Ranu Begum, a visitor. Bangladesh has extended its lockdown to Wednesday to combat a surge in COVID-19 cases led by the highly contagious Delta variant.
IRAN
Cyberattack hits ministry
The Web site of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development was on Saturday taken down by what state television said was a “cyber disruption,” a day after an apparent cyberattack on the state railway company. Computer systems of ministry staff were the subject of the attack, which resulted in the ministry’s portal and sub-portal sites becoming unavailable, state television reported. It did not give any indication of who it believed could have been behind the attack, and did not say if any ransom demand had been made. Train services had been disrupted on Friday, with hackers posting fake delay notices on station boards, state-affiliated news outlets reported. The government-run railway company said only the displays had been affected and that trains ran normally.
GERMAN
Famed war survivor dies
Esther Bejarano, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp who used the power of music to fight antisemitism and racism in post-war Germany, has died at the age of 96. Bejarano died in the early on Saturday at the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg, the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur quoted Helga Obens, a board member of the International Auschwitz Committee in Germany, as saying. A cause of death was not given. Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas paid tribute to Bejarano, calling her “an important voice in the fight against racism and antisemitism.” Bejarano was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943, where she volunteered to become a member of the girls’ orchestra, playing the accordion every time trains full of Jews from across Europe arrived. Bejarano would later say that music helped keep her alive in the notorious death camp. “We played with tears in our eyes,” she said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press. “The new arrivals came in waving and applauding us, but we knew they would be taken directly to the gas chambers.” Bejarano emigrated to Israel and married Nissim Bejarano. The couple had two children before returning to Germany in 1960. After again encountering open antisemitism, Bejarano decided to become politically active, cofounding the International Auschwitz Committee in 1986. She teamed up with her children to play Yiddish melodies and Jewish resistance songs, and also with hip-hop group Microphone Mafia to spread an anti-racism message. Bejarano received numerous awards, including Germany’s Order of Merit, for her activism.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
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