UNITED STATES
Kennedy denies claims
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Tuesday said he has “so many skeletons in my closet,” when asked about an allegation in a Vanity Fair article that he sexually assaulted a former family babysitter. Kennedy also denied a picture of him posing with the barbecued carcass of a large animal — which Vanity Fair said appeared to be a dog. He said it was the carcass of a goat. Vanity Fair said Kennedy texted the photo to a friend last year, saying the friend might enjoy a restaurant in South Korea that served dog on the menu. “Hey @VanityFair, you know when your veterinary experts call a goat a dog, and your forensic experts say a photo taken in Patagonia was taken in Korea, that you’ve joined the ranks of supermarket tabloids,” Kennedy wrote on social media platform X. Reuters was not able to independently confirm details of the photograph. The Vanity Fair article also said that in 1998 Kennedy and his then-wife Mary Richardson hired a 23-year-old woman, Eliza Cooney, as their part-time babysitter, who told the magazine that Kennedy groped her in the family kitchen.
INDONESIA
Python swallows woman
A woman was found dead inside the belly of a snake after it swallowed her whole in South Sulawesi, police said yesterday, the second python killing in the province in a month. Siriati, 36, had gone missing after she left her house on Tuesday morning to buy medicine for her sick child, police said. Her husband, Adiansa, 30, found her slippers and pants on the ground about 500m from their house in Siteba Village. “Shortly after that, he spotted a snake, about 10m from the path. The snake was still alive,” local police said. Village secretary Iyang said that Adiansa became suspicious after he noticed the python’s “very large” belly. He called the villagers to help cut open its stomach, where they found her body.
UNITED STATES
‘Chinatown’ writer dies
Robert Towne, the Hollywood writer whose Chinatown script is often described as the greatest screenplay ever written, has died at 89. The Oscar winner, whose credits also include The Last Detail and Shampoo, and the first two Mission: Impossible films, passed away at home in Los Angeles, publicist Carri McClure said. Towne was a leading figure of the 1970s New Hollywood movement. Several classics benefited from Towne’s input, despite his name being absent from their writing credits. Most famously these included Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather. For The Godfather, Towne received a shout-out from the Oscars stage as Francis Ford Coppola accepted the best screenplay prize for his classic. Coppola offered “credit where it is due” for “the very beautiful scene between Marlon [Brando] and Al Pacino in the garden — that was Bob Towne’s scene.” Towne was nominated for screenplay Oscars three years in a row during the mid-1970s, winning for Chinatown.
AUSTRALIA
Crocodile attack suspected
A 12-year-old missing in remote northern Australia might have been “attacked by a crocodile,” police said yesterday as search teams combed a creek for signs of the child. The child disappeared on Tuesday evening after swimming at Mango Creek near Palumpa. “Initial reports stated the child had been attacked by a crocodile,” Northern Territory Police said in a statement. Crocodile attacks are rare, but not unheard of in sparsely populated Northern Territory.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
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