NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Gaza violence: Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire and another 60 injured at a protest along the Gaza border, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Friday. The protesters threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas and sometimes live fire. Israel’s military said some Palestinians also threw improvised explosives and firebombs and that several were spotted briefly crossing into Israeli territory. In several instances Gaza militants fired rockets and mortars at Israel which responded with air strikes on Gaza. The militantgroup Hamas has led weekly border protests aimed in part at drawing attention to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas took control of Gaza. Since the protests began at the end of March, 168 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including at least 125 protesters, according to the health ministry and a local rights group. An Israeli soldier was killed by a Gaza sniper during this same period.
2 Defective vaccines: Chinese leaders have fired four officials and punished dozens more in connection with a scandal over faulty vaccines that has undermined President Xi Jinping and fueled protests by parents. China’s top leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee, announced the punishments this week in a bid to restore confidence in the nation’s health care system, experts said. The government drew widespread criticism last month amid reports that hundreds of thousands of children had been injected with faulty vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. While the government has said the children were unharmed, the case has touched a nerve among Chinese parents frustrated by years of similar food and medicine scandals.
3 Victims remembered: King Felipe VI of Spain led a ceremony in Barcelona on Friday to pay tribute to the 16 people killed in terrorist attacks there one year ago, an event that was designed to show harmony amid a bitter dispute over independence for the region of Catalonia. On Aug. 17, 2017, a van swerved down Las Ramblas, a famous Barcelona boulevard, leaving behind a trail of bodies. One person was later killed in the driver’s getaway, and another in a second attack at a nearby seaside resort. More than 100 people were wounded. The event Friday included a flower-laying ceremony at a mosaic designed by Joan Miró, where the van used in the first attack came to a halt. Eight young people, each representing a different religion, read from a work by English poet John Donne in the eight languages spoken by the victims. The attacks were orchestrated by six young people of Moroccan descent who grew up in Catalonia. All were shot dead by police. 4 Ancient cheese: For thousands of years beneath Egypt’s desert sands a solidified whitish substance sat in a broken jar. Scientists now say it’s “probably the most ancient archaeological solid residue of cheese ever found.” They came across the finding while cleaning the sands around a 19th dynasty tomb at the vast Saqqara necropolis of the ancient city of Memphis. The tomb of Ptahmes, the mayor of ancient Memphis, was initially discovered in 1885 but had been swallowed by shifting sands until its rediscovery in 2010. The whitish solidified mass was found during the excavation work in 2013 and 2014, along with a canvas fabric that may have been used to cover the jar, possibly to preserve its contents, a study published this week in Analytical Chemistry said. The 3,200-year-old cheese was found to be made from a mixture of cow milk and that of a sheep or goat.