MEXICO
Dog leads police to grisly find
Police in the country’s south on Wednesday said that they found a dismembered human body after spotting a dog trotting down the street with a human arm in its mouth. It was the third time in the past month that canines have been seen in the country trotting off with human body parts. Police in the southern state of Oaxaca said they responded to a call on Wednesday morning about “a black dog that carried in its mouth a human arm.” State prosecutors later said the discovery led them to find other parts of the dismembered body in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Oaxaca City, the state capital. The victim’s cause of death and identity were not immediately known. Late last month, residents of a town in the state of Zacatecas saw a dog running down the street with a human head in its mouth. Police eventually managed to wrest the head away from the dog.
UNITED STATES
Quake hits west Texas
A strong earthquake shook a sparsely populated patch of desert in west Texas yesterday, causing tremors felt as far away as the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. The magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck at about 3:30pm, said Jim DeBerry, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the west Texas city of Midland. He said the strength of the quake means it likely caused damage in the remote oil patch and scrubland, but none had been reported so far. DeBerry said the epicenter was about 37km south of Mentone.
NIGERIA
At least 12 killed in attack
Gunmen have killed at least 12 people in an attack on a village in the northern state of Plateau, residents and the state governor said on Wednesday, the latest deadly incident fueled by growing pressure on land resources in the country. Violence between farmers and pastoralists has become increasingly common in the past few years as population growth leads to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads’ herds of cattle. A local resident, Bernard Matur, said the gunmen attacked Maikatako village on Monday evening.
SRI LANKA
Call to free protest leaders
The government is being urged to drop charges against two protest leaders detained for more than three months following the anti-government demonstrations that engulfed the island-nation earlier this year. Amnesty International also renewed its call for the country to repeal the harsh, civil war-era Prevention of Terrorism Act under which the two protest leaders are being held. Wasantha Mudalige and Galwewa Siridhamma, both university student leaders, were arrested in August and have been detained for more than 90 days under the act.
UNITED STATES
Mall security guard killed
A security guard was fatally shot inside a Chicago-area shopping mall on Wednesday, police said. Two men tried to rob a jewelry store at the mall, but were met by the security guard, police said. The robbers then pulled out weapons and fire several rounds. The shooting occurred just after noon at River Oaks Center in Calumet City. The guard was transported to a hospital, where he later died. About 20 people were inside the mall at the time of the shooting and police were working to interview them, Calumet City spokesman Sean Howard said.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly