Briefs Briefs
A 4WD carrying seven members of a British family plunged off a high bridge in Iceland, killing three people and critically injuring the others. Icelandic police said one child was among the dead and two were among the injured. The accident occurred when the vehicle slammed through a railing on the one-lane bridge at Skeidararsandur, a vast sand plain in southern Iceland. The car landed on a rocky river bank. Police say it remains unclear what caused the driver to lose control but temperatures were around freezing.
Musk lawsuit
Elon Musk is asking a California judge to throw out a lawsuit filed against him by a British diver the tech entrepreneur called a pedophile on Twitter, arguing that it was nothing more than a “schoolyard spat on social media” that no reasonable reader took seriously. Musk’s motion to dismiss, filed in court, argues that “the public knew from the outset that Musk’s insults were not intended to be statements of fact”. Musk called diver Vernon Unsworth a “pedo” in a tweet to 22.5 million followers after Unsworth criticised Musk on CNN in July, saying his efforts to help rescue young football players trapped in a cave in Thailand amounted to “a PR stunt”. Unsworth lives in Thailand with his female partner and started going to Thailand in 2011 to explore and map caves, the lawsuit said.
Barrel-rider
A French pensioner has set out to cross the Atlantic inside a large barrel he has built from reinforced plywood, hoping to arrive on a Caribbean island within three months using only ocean currents to carry him along. “The weather is great — I’ve got a swell of 1m and I’m moving at 2 or 3 km/h,” Jean-Jacques Savin said shortly after leaving shore from El Hierro Island in the Canaries. “For the time being my capsule is behaving very, very well.” Savin, a 71-year old former parachutist, built the 3m-long vessel, which resembles a space capsule, in Als. It includes a kitchen, sleeping bunk, chart table, and storage.
Back in favour
The United Arab Emirates has reopened its Syrian embassy in a significant step towards bringing Bashar al-Assad back into the fold of Arab leaders after years of estrangement. Syria was suspended from the Arab League shortly after civil war broke out in 2011 and most Arab states closed their embassies in Damascus in protest at the Syrian President’s violent crackdown against the opposition. It has become clear that Assad is likely to prevail over rebel forces and stay in power.