While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Sept 17, 2024
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was targeted in a second apparent assassination attempt on Sept 16.
PHOTO: AFP
Trump blames Biden and Harris ‘rhetoric’ for assassination bids
Donald Trump on Monday blamed his election rival Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden after he was targeted in a second apparent assassination attempt, saying their “rhetoric” about him endangering democracy is to blame.
Trump’s rapid politicisation of Sunday’s incident, in which a man allegedly planned to fire on the Republican while he played golf in Florida, guaranteed that tensions ahead of the presidential election in seven weeks would continue to boil.
Both Biden and Harris have denounced the apparent assassination bid.
The suspect, identified by police as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, was arrested soon after being spotted while hiding with an assault-style rifle at the edge of Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach. US Secret Service agents opened fire, and he fled before surrendering without a struggle.
Tencent’s Pony Ma reclaims title of China’s richest person
Tencent Holdings co-founder Pony Ma returned to the top of the wealth rankings in China, making him the latest tech billionaire to achieve the status.
Weak economic data from the world’s second-biggest economy sent some Hong Kong-listed shares lower on Sept 16, allowing Ma to surpass bottled water tycoon Zhong Shanshan with a fortune of US$44 billion (S$51.84 billion) as of 9.53am New York time, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zhong drops to third place, and Zhang Yiming, the founder of privately-held TikTok owner ByteDance, is second.
UK doctors agree 22.3% pay rise to end strikes
Hospital doctors in England have accepted a 22.3-per-cent government pay offer, their union and the health ministry said Monday, ending a wave of damaging strikes that hit patient care.
Junior doctors – those below consultant level – have staged a series of walk-outs over the last 18 months in protest at below-inflation wage increases since 2010 and as cost-of-living pressures increased.
Soon after it was voted into power in July, the new Labour government proposed the substantial rise over two years to end the industrial action that saw the medics strike 11 times.
TikTok faces tough questions from court over challenge to US law
A lawyer for TikTok and Chinese parent company ByteDance sought on Sept 16 to convince a federal appeals court to block a US law that would ban the short video app used by 170 million Americans as soon as Jan 19, arguing that it violates free speech protections, but faced tough questions from the judges.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard two hours of arguments in the lawsuit filed by TikTok and ByteDance in May seeking an injunction to prevent the law from taking effect.
Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tenny pressed the US government’s stance that TikTok, under Chinese ownership, poses a national security threat because of its access to vast amounts of personal data on Americans, asserting that China can covertly manipulate information that Americans consume via the popular app.
Brain implant lets man control Amazon’s Alexa with thought
A patient with a degenerative disease was able to command Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant with his mind, the company behind the technological innovation announced Sept 16, letting him stream shows and control devices with only his thoughts.
An implant in a blood vessel on the surface of the 64-year-old man’s brain let him mentally “tap” icons on an Amazon Fire tablet, brain-computer interface company Synchron said.
The patient, who is living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), was able to make video calls, play music, stream shows, control smart home devices such as lights, shop online, and read books by using his mind to direct Alexa, according to the New York-based company.
