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Witnesses have described the terrifying moment crew asked for ‘strong men’ to help subdue a passenger who tried to open a door on a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta. The passenger appeared to be wearing an orange life jacket. An eyewitness said on Twitter that passenger grabbed the public addresss system in the front galley and made an announcement telling others to take their seats and to be prepared to put on their oxygen masks, before attempting to force open the door. In response, flight attendants asked all “strong able-bodied men” to go the front of the plane to help. In video posted online, passengers and crew members can be seen restraining the man.

 

Polls opened in Algeria on Saturday for a parliamentary election that the ruling establishment hopes will turn a page on two years of political unrest, but which many voters are expected to ignore. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has called for a high turnout, but there has been little public enthusiasm for voting in recent elections, with many Algerians convinced real power is wielded by the army and security forces.

Source: reuters.com

Michael Packard, 56, of Wellfleet, told WBZ-TV after he was released from Cape Cod hospital that he was about 45ft (14 meters) deep in the waters off Provincetown when “all of a sudden I felt this huge bump, and everything went dark”. He estimates he was in the whale’s mouth for about 30 seconds, but continued to breathe because he still had his breathing apparatus in. Then the whale surfaced, shook its head, and spat him out. He was rescued by his crewmate in the surface boat.

Source: theguardian.com

The former speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani demanded on Saturday an explanation from an election watchdog on why he was barred from running in next week’s presidential vote. Last month, the hardline Guardian Council approved just seven hopefuls to stand in Friday’s poll and disqualified several prominent candidates, including Larijani and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Source: reuters.com

A nearly 7,000-year-old clay impression was discovered in Israel's Beit She'an Valley. The seal may have been used for several reasons, including signing for deliveries. It could have been used to close silos or barndoors, a sign someone was there. This seal had two different geometric stamps on it. It's from an era when writing was not yet in use, making the shapes important. The shapes may be an indication two people were involved in a transaction.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

French soldiers have killed a Malian jihadist suspected of being responsible for the kidnapping and death of two French journalists in 2013. Florence Parly, the defence minister in Paris, said French forces in the Sahel region killed “four terrorists” during an operation in northern Mali on 5 June, including Bayes Ag Bakabo, the prime suspect in the deaths of Radio France International (RFI) reporters Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon.

Source: theguardian.com

Uruguay striker Sebastian 'Loco' Abreu, who holds the Guinness World Record as the professional to have played for the most clubs -- 31 -- was playing his last game Friday at the age of 44. "The day has come, the curtain is coming down," Abreu had announced on Thursday after a career of 27 years in more than a dozen countries. He was to play his final match on Friday with his latest club, Sud America, or IASA, against another Montevideo team, Liverpool, in Uruguay's Apertura tournament.

Source: france24.com

Italy waited a long time for this European Championship to start and then showed Friday just how eager the team was to play the tournament opener. After humiliatingly failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, Italy was already back on track with a perfect qualifying campaign of 10 wins in 10 matches. Now Roberto Mancini’s team has begun its first major international tournament in five years with a convincing 3-0 win over Turkey.

Source: apnews.com

Novak Djokovic ended Rafael Nadal's reign at the French Open with a four-set win in a classic semi-final which will be ranked among the all-time great matches on the Roland Garros clay. Serbian top seed Djokovic won 3-6 6-3 7-6 (7-4) 6-2 against Nadal, champion in each of the past four years. Nadal, going for a record-extending 14th title, lost at Roland Garros for only the third time in 108 matches. Djokovic, 34, must now recover to play Stefanos Tsitsipas in Sunday's final.

Source: bbc.com

A top official from the Chinese county that hosted a fatal ultramarathon last month has been found dead, authorities said Friday, as 27 people face punishment over the incident. The deadly incident sparked calls for more regulation and raised questions over why organisers had apparently ignored the incoming weather. On Friday, provincial authorities told a press conference that the Communist Party secretary of Jingtai county -- which hosted the event -- had been found dead. Li Zuobi was confirmed to have died after falling from the building where he lived. Police received the incident report on Wednesday, and have since ruled out homicide.

Source: france24.com

Kim Jong-un called it a “vicious cancer” corrupting young North Koreans’ “attire, hairstyles, speeches, behaviors.” His state media has warned that if left unchecked, it would make North Korea “crumble like a damp wall.” After winning fans around the world, South Korean pop culture has entered the final frontier: North Korea, where its growing influence has prompted the leader of the totalitarian state to declare a new culture war to stop it. But even a dictator may have trouble holding back the tide.

Source: nytimes.com

Chinese researchers said Thursday they had found a batch of new coronaviruses in bats including one that may be the second-closest yet, genetically, to the Covid-19 virus. According to the researchers, their discoveries in a single, small region of Yunnan province, southwestern China show just how many coronaviruses there are in bats and how many have the potential to spread to people.

Source: cnn.com

A Pakistan province said Friday it will block the mobile phones of people refusing to get Covid-19 jabs, in the latest move to penalise the unvaccinated in a country where only a fraction of the population have been inoculated. It comes after Sindh province said civil servants who refuse to be vaccinated will not be paid from July.

Source: france24.com

Over the past 18 months, 29 prisoners have escaped from federal lockups across the U.S. — and nearly half still have not been caught. At some of the institutions, doors are left unlocked, security cameras are broken and officials sometimes don’t notice an inmate is missing for hours. At one Texas lockup, security is so lax that local law enforcement officials privately joke about its seemingly “open-door policy.”

Source: apnews.com

Peru has finished counting the votes in a tight presidential run-off election, but an official announcement may take days. Leftist Pedro Castillo kept a lead of about 60,000 votes over conservative Keiko Fujimori, who has claimed fraud without providing detailed evidence. Ms Fujimori wants hundreds of thousands of votes to be reviewed. Observers say Sunday's poll was carried out cleanly. A political novice, Mr Castillo has pledged to rewrite the constitution.

Source: bbc.com

Greek workers took to the streets on Thursday in the country’s first general strike since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as unions rallied against a government plan to reshape working hours. Labor-market reforms proposed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis include a plan for flexible hours, which could involve working longer for four days and getting an extended weekend. But with Greece suffering the highest unemployment rate in Europe, labor organizers worry the move would be used by employers to exploit workers, which could struggle to actually get the time off.

Source: bloomberg.com

The Warner Bros. movie studio will produce an anime feature film set in the world of J.R.R. "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" will tell the story of a legendary battle that shaped Middle-Earth in the years leading up to events in 2001 film "The Lord of the Rings," a statement from the studio said. The new movie will explore the fortress of Helm's Deep and feature the King of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand. Tolkien's popular "The Lord of the Rings" books, officials announced on Thursday. Anime filmmaker Kenji Kamiyama will direct the film. No release date was set.

Source: reuters.com

A five-year-old white rhinoceros has travelled from Taiwan to Japan - all as part of a quest to find love. Emma has begun her stay at Japan's Tobu Zoo, with 10-year-old rhinoceros Moran being her first suitor. She was picked out of a group of 23 rhinos to be sent to Japan, due to her "mild personality", with staff saying she "rarely got into fights". Her stay at the zoo is part of an attempt to increase the number of captive-bred white rhinos in Asia.

Source: bbc.com