While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Sept 2
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Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam won the presidential election with a vote share of 70.4 per cent.
ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG
Tharman pledges to build ‘future of optimism, solidarity’
President-elect Tharman Shanmugaratnam pledged to use his presidency to help build a future of optimism and solidarity among all Singaporeans.
Making his first remarks to the media after early indications that he had won the election by a landslide, Mr Tharman said his win was a vote of confidence in Singapore’s future.
“I pledge and it will be my duty to use the roles and responsibilities of the president to advance this future of optimism and solidarity among Singaporeans. That is my pledge,” Mr Tharman said at the Taman Jurong Market and Food Centre, surrounded by hundreds of jubilant supporters.
Mr Tharman, 66, will be Singapore’s ninth president. He won the election with a vote share of 70.4 per cent.
Ukraine says troops breach Russian lines
Ukraine said on Friday its troops had broken through Russia’s first line of defences in several places, though they then encountered even more heavily-fortified Russian positions.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Kyiv’s troops, in a much-vaunted counteroffensive against Russian forces, were advancing in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Washington also said on Friday that Kyiv had made notable progress on the southern front in the last 72 hours.
Harrods owner whose son dated Princess Diana, dies
Mohamed Al-Fayed, the self-made Egyptian billionaire who bought the Harrods department store and promoted the discredited conspiracy theory that the British royal family was behind the death of his son and Princess Diana, has died, Fulham Football Club said in a statement.
“On behalf of everyone at Fulham Football Club, I send my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mohamed Al-Fayed upon the news of his passing at age 94,” said Mr Shahid Khan, who succeeded Al-Fayed as owner of the London soccer club.
Although Al-Fayed owned establishment symbols such as Harrods, Fulham and the Ritz hotel in Paris, he was always an outsider in Britain, tolerated but not embraced.
Outrage after rare brown bear shot dead in central Italy
Italian politicians and wildlife experts condemned on Friday the shooting dead of a rare brown bear, as a search was under way for her two cubs.
Amarena was one of the most popular of the Marsican brown bears in the Abruzzo National Park in central Italy, often pictured in and around the area with her offspring.
A local man was immediately identified as the shooter, according to park authorities, which condemned the “very serious incident”.
Stone wows Venice as sex-mad reanimated corpse
With Emma Stone as a sexually voracious reanimated corpse in Poor Things and Wes Anderson presenting his take on Roald Dahl, the Venice Film Festival was taken on some wild rides on Friday.
Poor Things, a hilarious and strongly feminist reworking of Frankenstein, was labelled an “instant classic” by critics.
As Bella, a woman brought back to life with an infant’s brain by a mad scientist (played by Willem Defoe), it features some of the most explicit sex ever seen in an A-list Hollywood film, as her naive character discovers – and very much enjoys – her sexuality.
