Japan's Emperor Akihito Turns 81, Renews Commitment To Peace Ahead Of 70th Year Since War End

(LONDON) — King Charles III plans to travel to France next month for British ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, while skipping the larger international event a few miles away as he continues to be treated for cancer. Charles and Queen Camilla are expected to attend a ceremony at the British Normandy Memorial at Ver-sur-Mer on June 6, Buckingham Palace said Friday.

mdash; Canadian police announced Friday they have linked the deaths of four young women nearly 50 years ago to a now-deceased U. S. fugitive who hid in Canada from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Dave Hall said Friday that Gary Allen Srery might also be linked to unsolved murders and sexual assaults in Western Canada, and authorities are asking the public for more information that may link him to other unsolved cases. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “We are now announcing that we have linked four previously unsolved homicides from the 1970s to a now deceased serial, sexual offender,” Hall said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta. Srery died in 2011 in a state prison in Idaho of natural causes while serving a life sentence for sexual assault. A break in the homicides in Canada came when authorities began comparing DNA of the killer with profiles on ancestry websites, which eventually lead them to a match with Srery, Hall said. Hall provided details of the four Canadian cases linked to Srery. He said that in 1976 Eva Dvorak and Patricia McQueen were both 14-year-olds living in Calgary, Alberta attending junior high.

(DENVER) — A Colorado man pleaded guilty to murder charges on Friday for starting a 2020 house fire that killed five members of a Senegalese family out of misplaced revenge for a stolen iPhone that he mistakenly tracked to the house. Kevin Bui, now 20, was a teenager at the time of the fire but prosecuted as an adult.

The U. S. Department of State issued a worldwide travel advisory on Friday due to a “potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations, or violent actions against U. S. citizens and interests,” the agency announced. The State Department specifically pointed to increased violence against LGBTQ+ people and pride-related events as a reason for the advisory.

(BIG SUR, Calif.) — A section of California’s scenic Highway 1 leading to the famous Big Sur coast reopened to around-the-clock traffic Friday after stabilization of a storm-triggered rockslide that dropped a chunk of one lane into the ocean and hampered tourism. The gap has yet to be closed, but after placement of steel and concrete into the cliff, a temporary signal system was activated to allow alternating north-south traffic on the undamaged lane, according to the California Department of Transportation. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The reopening came eight days ahead of schedule and just in time for summer travel. “Highway 1 is the jewel of the California highway system and our crews have been working non-stop for the last month and a half so Californians can have unrestricted access to this iconic area of our state,” Caltrans Director Tony Tavares said in a statement this week. Big Sur is a 90-mile (145-kilometer) stretch of the state’s central coast where misty, forested mountains rise up from the ocean.

The Israeli government’s approach to Hamas has been, by most accounts, a strategic failure. Israel’s citizens were not protected on Oct. 7, 2023, despite what seems to have been indicative prior warning of that appalling Hamas attack. And the decisive military defeat of Hamas remains elusive. The staggering death, injury, and suffering inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in response has also helped turn much global opinion sharply against Israel, while doing little to bolster the security of ordinary Israelis. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Historically, it is responses to terrorism that have changed the world more than the violence itself, often in profoundly unwelcome ways.