Novelist Salman Rushdie stabbed in neck at New York lecture
Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him because of his writing, was stabbed in the neck and abdomen onstage at a lecture in New York state on Friday and airlifted to a hospital, police said.
He was alive and still in surgery early Friday evening, state police said.
A man rushed to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and attacked Rushdie, 75, as he was being introduced to give a talk on artistic freedom to an audience of hundreds, eyewitnesses said.
A New York State Police trooper providing security at the event took the attacker into custody. The suspect was identified as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass to the event, police said.
FBI seized top secret documents at Trump’s home
FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Florida home this week removed 11 sets of classified documents including some marked as top secret, the US Justice Department said on Friday while also disclosing that prosecutors had probable cause to believe Trump may have violated the Espionage Act.
The bombshell disclosures were made in a search warrant and accompanying legal documents released four days after FBI agents carried out the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach based on a warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge.
Trump, in a statement on his social media platform, said the records at issue were “all declassified” and placed in “secure storage.”
US to boost Taiwan trade, conduct transits in Strait
The United States is responding to China's "provocative" behaviour on Taiwan by boosting trade with the democratically run island and insisting on right of air and sea passage through the tense Taiwan Strait, the White House said on Friday.
A new trade plan will be unveiled within days, while US forces will transit the Taiwan Strait in the next few weeks, said Kurt Campbell, White House coordinator for Asia-Pacific issues and an adviser to President Joe Biden.
Campbell told reporters that communist China has used the controversial recent visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan to try and change the island's uneasy status quo.
Ukraine says it can hit 'almost all' Russian supply lines in south
Ukraine's military said its artillery hit a Russian ammunition depot near a key bridge in the south on Friday and added it now had the ability to strike nearly all of Moscow's supply lines in the occupied region.
The military said the attack killed 11 Russian soldiers in the depot in the village of Vesele, about 130km down the vast Dnipro river from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities on the report of the attack in Kherson province, or the purported reach of Ukraine's firepower.
Actress Anne Heche legally dead after crash
Hollywood actor Anne Heche has been declared legally dead, one week after she crashed her car into a Los Angeles building, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
Heche, 53, had been comatose in hospital with a severe brain injury since the fiery collision on Aug 5.
Having lost all brain function, she is “legally dead according to California law,” though her heart is still beating as her family keeps her body on life support while exploring organ donations, spokeswoman Holly Baird told AFP.
