Around the world
North America Oliver Stone will write and direct a film about Edward Snowden, one of two high-profile films in the works about the National Security Agency leaker. Stone says that he plans to adapt The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, by Guardian journalist Luke Harding. Sony Pictures last month bought the rights to Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State.
New York police are searching for a suspect after a 6-year-old boy was killed and a 7-year-old girl critically wounded in a stabbing in Brooklyn. Prince Joshua Avitto and his friend Mikayla Capers were on their way to get icecream on Monday when a man stabbed them in the lift of a Brooklyn housing project.
A judge says ailing radio personality Casey Kasem can return to the Washington state home where he’s been staying with his wife if doctors approve. Authorities say the 82-year-old Kasem was taken by ambulance on Monday to a medical facility after an argument between his wife and one of his daughters. Latin America
Heavy rains have killed at least five people in Guatemala, where authorities urged residents to take precautions because showers and thunderstorms are expected to continue this week. A landslide set off by rain killed five members of a family over the weekend in the province of Huehuetenango. Asia/Oceania
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott brushed off a media report that his telephone conversation with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last month was secretly recorded by a journalist. The ABC reported that journalists had been allowed in the same room as Yudhoyono on Bali when he took Abbott’s call from Australia. A journalist published a transcript of the conversation. Europe
Scotland would find itself behind Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia in the queue to join the EU if it breaks away from the UK, British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed yesterday. He was speaking as a business group warned an independent Scotland would have to wait until 2019 at the earliest to re-enter the EU because several member states would veto an accelerated process. “They would have to queue up behind other countries,” he said. Middle East
Rebel groups have threatened a day of bloodshed today as millions of Syrians vote in a presidential election amid a full-blown civil war. A document circulated by armed opposition groups in the central Hama province and shown to the
Daily Telegraph warns activists not to leave their homes during the elections because of planned attacks on the city. “We warn the licentious regime that we are going to burn the land under their feet,” said the document, which was signed by the major revolutionary and military councils in the area. For the past month, the opposition has looked on in helpless fury as the Syrian Government presses ahead with “democratic” presidential elections.