AUSTRALIA
Furor over cabbage switch
Fried chicken chain KFC yesterday said that high lettuce prices have forced it to switch to a cabbage mix in burgers and other products, prompting customers to complain the result is less than “finger lickin’ good.” The local price of lettuce has soared by as much as 300 percent, forcing the fast-food chain to tweak the Colonel’s recipe in some stores. “We’re currently experiencing a lettuce shortage. So, we’re using a lettuce and cabbage blend on all products containing lettuce until further notice,” the company said. The company blamed widespread flooding for the problem. The company told customers: “If that’s not your bag, simply click ‘customise’ on your chosen product and remove lettuce from the recipe :)” The change was certainly not the “bag” of some social media users. “The fact that you are replacing lettuce with cabbage makes me rethink my whole meal at KFC. There’s 4 or 5 other things I would eat before cabbage. Its such a weird choice,” one disgruntled customer wrote on Twitter. “Feels like a sign of the apocalypse,” wrote another.
SOUTH AFRICA
Gupta brothers arrested
Two wealthy India-born brothers who were allegedly at the center of a massive web of state corruption in South Africa have been arrested in Dubai, Pretoria announced on Monday. The arrests came as a probe was concluded into massive plundering of state institutions during former president Jacob Zuma’s era. The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development “confirms that it has received information from law enforcement authorities in the United Arab Emirates that fugitives of justice, namely, Rajesh and Atul Gupta, have been arrested,” it said in a statement. The brothers have been accused of paying bribes in exchange for massive and lucrative state contracts, and influence over ministerial appointments.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Minister killed in office
The minister of the environment and natural resources — the son of a former president — was shot to death in his office by a close friend on Monday, the office of the president said in a statement. Authorities said Orlando Jorge Mera was shot by Fausto Miguel de Jesus Cruz de la Mota, who was later arrested at a church after telling a priest he committed a crime and handing him a gun. Officials gave no motive for the shooting. As shots rang out late on Monday morning, people on the street yelled and took cover as those fleeing the building climbed over a tall fence after first throwing over purses, backpacks and even a pair of shoes because the building’s main gates were locked. Authorities said that in a telephone conversation with Cruz while he was at the church, he promised to turn himself in if they guaranteed he would not be killed.
UNITED STATES
‘Top Gun’ lawsuit filed
The family of the author whose article inspired the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun on Monday sued Paramount Pictures for copyright infringement over this year’s blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick. According to a complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court, Paramount Global failed to reacquire the rights to Ehud Yonay’s 1983 article “Top Guns” from the family before releasing the “derivative” sequel. The lawsuit by Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay, who live in Israel and are respectively Ehud’s widow and son, seeks unspecified damages, including profits from Top Gun: Maverick, and to block distribution of the movie or further sequels.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to take action against the EU if it moves forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member. “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act; I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump told reporters en route to an event in North Carolina, calling the proposal “laughable.” “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he said. Von der Leyen made the proposal
The US military came close to boarding a Chinese vessel in the Middle East earlier this year based on a flawed intelligence report prepared with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), CNN said on Friday. US intelligence indicated the ship was carrying nuclear weapons-related components, leading US forces to prepare to intercept it, the broadcaster reported, citing four anonymous sources familiar with the incident. However, the operation was called off after officials determined that an AI chatbot used by an analyst had misidentified the material the ship was carrying. The report was “entirely false,” but “almost started a war,” CNN quoted one source
French President Emmanuel Macron today embarks on a rare and symbolic visit to a remote French territory in the North Atlantic, hosting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at a time of growing tensions with Washington. The three-day visit to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a three-island archipelago of less than 6,000 people just 25km off Newfoundland, would be the first by a French president in more than a decade. The trip to France’s only remaining possession in North America, a vestige of the huge territories Paris once controlled in what is now Canada and the US, carries immense symbolic resonance. Macron insists that US
SEEKING AN AGREEMENT: The Cambodian foreign minister said Phnom Penh aimed to build trust through the mediation process, not further escalate tensions Thailand yesterday said that Cambodia was playing the victim in a dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbors took their feud to international mediators a year after deadly clashes over their land border. Cambodia, which initiated the case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in Singapore, said it hoped the hearings would yield a peaceful resolution for both countries. In May, Thailand unilaterally pulled out of a bilateral framework agreement that aimed to resolve overlapping maritime border claims, but denied any link to their land dispute. Cambodia subsequently initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the PCA, saying it hoped to
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