RUSSIA
Performer dies on stage
A performer of the legendary Bolshoi Theater was killed on Saturday in an accident on stage during the performance of an opera, the Moscow company said. The theater said the incident took place during a set change in Sadko, a 19th-century opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. “The performance was immediately stopped and the audience was asked to leave,” the theater’s press service told the Interfax news agency. Moscow’s Investigative Committee said in a statement that it was probing the death of the 37-year-old male performer. They did not reveal his name, but said he received injuries and died before an ambulance arrived. Citing a source, Interfax reported that the performer was crushed by a ramp during a set change. The accident is not the first tragedy to strike Moscow’s renowned theater. In 2013, a senior violinist died after falling into the orchestra pit.
SPAIN
Volcano spews more lava
A new river of lava belched on Saturday from a volcano on La Palma, spreading more destruction on the Canary island where more than 1,000 buildings have already been engulfed or badly damaged by streams of molten rock. The partial collapse of the volcanic cone overnight gave birth to a new lava stream that started to follow a similar path down the Cumbre Vieja ridge toward the western shore of the island to the Atlantic Ocean. Authorities said the new lava flow is within the area that was hastily evacuated following a Sept. 19 eruption, when 6,000 residents were forced to flee their homes and farms. Police let residents whose homes could now be in danger make trips to save what they could. Trucks entered the exclusion zone empty on Saturday and left with mattresses, furniture and other belongings.
UNITED STATES
Attacker beaten to death
A man died after he tried to hit people on a sidewalk with his truck, crashed against a building and then was pulled out and beaten by the group in Southern California, authorities said. The man was asked to leave a business in Hawthorne early on Saturday and then argued with someone while walking to his truck, said Lieutenant Hugo Reynaga of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The man then intentionally drove the truck onto the sidewalk, nearly hitting a group of patrons before his truck wedged against a tree, the Daily Breeze reported. As the patrons tried to take the man out of the driver’s seat, he accelerated again and hit the corner of a nearby building, Reynaga said. The patrons took the driver out of the truck and continued fighting with him as Hawthorne police arrived, sheriff’s Deputy Grace Medrano said. The driver suffered blunt-force trauma, Medrano said. He died at the scene.
UNITED STATES
Missing toddler found alive
A three-year-old Texas boy who was missing for four days was found alive in a wooded area on Saturday and seemed to be in good health, authorities said. Christopher Ramirez was found following a tip from a citizen and was being taken to a hospital for evaluation, Grimes County Sheriff Don Sowell said. It is not yet clear how the child survived after he wandered off while playing with a family dog in the yard of his family’s home in southeastern Texas. “He’s drinking lots of water, but he’s good,” Sowell said. “He’s alive, laughing, cutting up, crying. His mom is crying. He’s in good shape.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of
RSS