UNITED STATES
Tatjana Patitz dies
Tatjana Patitz, one of the original supermodels who dominated fashion in the 1980s and 1990s commanding huge payouts for photoshoots, died on Wednesday, her agent said. She was 56. The Germany-born Patitz was among a handful of women of the era whose looks and style catapulted them to a global fame that transcended modelling. Corinne Nicolas, founder of The Model CoOp, a Manhattan-based agency told reporters that Patitz died on Wednesday morning in California. Nicolas told media that Patitz had been ill, but gave no further details.
UNITED STATES
Jeff Beck passes away
Jeff Beck, the influential guitarist who rose to rock ’n’ roll stardom with 1960s supergroup the Yardbirds and later enjoyed a prolific solo career, has died, his official Web site said on Wednesday. He was 78. A guitar virtuoso and innovator who was also one of the world’s great rhythm and blues interpreters, Beck died “peacefully” after being stricken by illness. “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing. After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday,” a statement on the English-born musician’s Web site said. “His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.”
MEXICO
Gang linked to shooting
Mexico City police on Wednesday said that an extortion and drug-dealing gang was behind the Dec. 15 shooting attack on one of Mexico’s best-known journalists. Police Chief Omar Garcia Harfuch said that 11 people had been detained in connection with the attack on a vehicle driven by journalist Ciro Gomez Leyva. The gang dealt in murder, extorting money from businesspeople and street-level drug dealing on the city’s east side. Officials did not explain why the gang tried to kill one of Mexico’s most prominent journalists.
ZIMBABWE
Law limits health strikes
Harare has brought in a law that bans health workers such as nurses and doctors from prolonged strikes, imposing punishments of up to six months in jail for defiant workers or union leaders, state-run media and a government spokesman said on Wednesday. The provision, signed into law by President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week, but made public now, stipulates that health workers can only strike for up to three days because they are considered an essential service. Health professionals should continue providing emergency services during a strike, government spokesman Nick Mangwana wrote on Twitter.
IRAN
Tehran sentences ex-official
Tehran has sentenced a former deputy defense minister who holds dual Iranian-British citizenship to death on charges of spying for Britain, Iranian state media reported on Wednesday. Britain described the death sentence on Alireza Akbari as politically motivated and called for his immediate release. Akbari was a close ally of Supreme National Security Secretary Ali Shamkhani, who was minister of defense from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy. “He was one of the most important agents of the British intelligence service in Iran who had access to some very sensitive centers in the country,” the Ministry of Intelligence said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
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