NEW ZEALAND
Death linked to ‘suicide kit’
Coroner Alexandra Cunninghame has linked a fifth death to a “suicide kit” allegedly sold online by a former Canadian chef, findings released yesterday showed. Cunninghame found that a 25-year-old killed herself in an Auckland hotel in April 2022 after receiving an item ordered from an online business linked to Canadian Kenneth Law. The coroner was unable to confirm whether the package actually contained the substance used in her suicide, but said that the “drug is heavily restricted, and therefore not easily obtainable, in New Zealand.” Cunninghame has previously connected the deaths of three students and a personal trainer who took their own lives in 2022 and last year to purchases from a Web site associated with Law. Police in Canada say that the former chef sent as many as 1,200 “suicide kits” to people in more than 40 countries between 2020 and his arrest last year.
Photo: Reuters
SOUTH KOREA
Medalist to make movie
Olympic pistol shooter Kim Ye-ji, whose skill and nonchalance won the Internet at the Paris Games, has landed her first acting role — as an assassin. The 32-year-old took silver in the women’s 10m air pistol in July and her ultra-calm demeanor, combined with her wire-rimmed shooting glasses and baseball cap, turned her into a worldwide online sensation. “She should be cast in an action movie. No acting required!” X owner Elon Musk wrote on the social media platform at the time. Now she is to play an assassin in Crush, a spinoff short-form series of the global film project Asia, a spokesperson for Seoul-based entertainment firm Asia Lab said yesterday.
KENYA
Three abducted men freed
Three people at the heart of an abduction case have been freed, rights groups said yesterday, accusing security forces of keeping Bob Njagi, Aslam Longton and his brother Jamil Longton captive for weeks after they took part in protests against the government. The three were allegedly abducted by men identifying themselves as police on Aug. 19 in Kitengela. “Our partners have confirmed their release,” Cornelius Oduor of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission said. “We strongly believe that they were taken by security agents of Kenya.” A court in Nairobi had held the acting police chief, Gilbert Masengeli, in contempt for failing to appear to answer questions about the disappearance of the three men. He was given until yesterday to appear in court to avoid a prison sentence. “We believe [the men’s release] was intended to provide immediate grounds for [Masengeli] to challenge his conviction,” Oduor said.
BRAZIL
Daylight saving may return
Energy authorities have approved bringing back daylight saving time, a senior official said on Thursday. Before it goes into effect, reinstating daylight savings time would need to be backed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. A drought in Brazil has affected some of the country’s largest hydroelectric plants, forcing a shift to more fuel imports and driving up power bills. By moving clocks forward an hour from November to February, daylight saving time would make use of more daylight hours and ease pressure on peak power consumption in the late afternoon. Then-president Jair Bolsonaro abolished daylight savings in 2019, saying that it was no longer benefiting the power sector.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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