FRANCE
Cars explode at synagogue
Two vehicles set on fire outside a synagogue in southern France yesterday caused an explosion in which a police officer was injured, authorities said. Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin called the incident near the Beth Yaacov synagogue in La Motte, near Montpellier on the southern coast, “an obviously criminal act.” He said that “all means are being deployed to find the perpetrator.” Darmanin and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal were to travel to the site of the explosion later yesterday. The explosion was likely caused by a gas canister hidden in one of the vehicles, police said.
ITALY
Sicily opens yacht probe
Sicilian prosecutors yesterday said they were investigating potential crimes of negligent shipwreck and manslaughter after a superyacht sank, killing seven people, but added that their probe was at the early stages. In a news conference, state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio identified no suspects and said “we do not exclude anything” after the Bayesian went down in a storm on Monday. UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter and five others were killed.
NIGERIA
Kidnapped students freed
Twenty Nigerian medical students kidnapped as they went to a convention have been freed more than a week after their abduction, police said yesterday. Gunmen seized the 20 on Thursday last week as they traveled to a conference in Benue State, in the center of the country, and later demanded a ransom, police said in a statement. Police said they had “confirmed the release of the 20 students from the University of Maiduguri and University of Jos.” No details were given on how the students were freed, but the country’s police chief had this week deployed a “tactical squad” in Benue as part of efforts to find the latest victims of a rising wave of abductions in Africa’s most populous country.
UNITED STATES
Meta warns campaigns
Meta on Friday said it had warned US presidential campaigns to be wary after it discovered an Iran-linked hacking attempt using the WhatsApp messaging service. The announcement is the latest from a tech giant of hacking threats ahead of the November election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, after Google and Microsoft earlier uncovered similar attempts attributed to Iran. WhatsApp accounts linked to an Iranian “threat actor” sent messages pretending to be technical support for AOL, Google, Yahoo or Microsoft, Meta said. “This malicious activity originated in Iran and attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States and the UK,” it said in a post online. “This effort appeared to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, and other public figures, including some associated with administrations of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.”
RUSSIA
Snipers kill inmates
National Guard snipers on Friday killed four inmates who had stabbed four prison guards to death and held others as hostages while declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group. The Federal Penitentiary Service said the inmates took eight prison guards and four inmates hostage. They stabbed four of the guards, three of whom died on the spot and the fourth one later died at a hospital, it said. Three other guards were hospitalized with injuries, it added. The National Guard said its snipers “neutralized” all four attackers, freeing all the hostages.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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