This roundup pulled together the day’s most prominent international stories, led by Donald Trump’s remarks on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the arrest of Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn in Japan.
Trump said he had declined to listen to a recording connected to Khashoggi’s killing, describing it as “a suffering tape” and “terrible.” The comments came as scrutiny continued over the Saudi consulate killing in Istanbul the previous month.
In Japan, prosecutors arrested Ghosn after an internal Nissan investigation said it had uncovered “significant acts of misconduct” over many years. A separate report said the company had proposed removing him over financial misconduct claims, including under-reporting his pay and “personal use of company assets.”
Aviation investigators were still focused on the Lion Air 610 disaster, in which everyone on board died when the aircraft crashed 13 minutes after takeoff. The plane was one of Boeing’s newest models, and the weather was not considered a factor.
The roundup also noted confusion over Trump’s wildfire comments in Finland. Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said he did not recall discussing forest fires and raking with Trump during their meeting in Paris the previous weekend, despite Trump’s claim that Finns avoid fires because they “spend a lot of time raking.”
Another item in the list concerned a Chinese novelist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for writing and distributing homoerotic novels, prompting debate online over the severity of the punishment. NASA was also reported to have started building its X-59 QueSST supersonic jet with Lockheed Martin, a project some have called “the son of Concorde.”
Elsewhere, the roundup mentioned political tension around a Chinese-language film awards ceremony in Taiwan, warnings that malaria cases had risen in at least 13 countries in Africa and South America, and the discovery of an Argentine naval submarine a year and a day after it vanished in the South Atlantic with 44 crew members aboard.
Other headlines included Israel’s government surviving a possible collapse after Naftali Bennett said he would stay in the coalition, a stolen Picasso case in Romania being exposed as a forgery, and the sale of three water cannon bought and refurbished for more than £320,000 under Boris Johnson’s time as London mayor. Those vehicles, acquired as crowd-control equipment after the 2011 riots, were later sold for £11,025, leaving a loss of about £300,000.
The roundup closed with lighter items, including peanut allergy treatment research, the off-grid community of Scoraig in Scotland, YouTube’s free ad-supported films, Barack Obama surprising Michelle Obama with flowers in Washington, D.C., and Joe Biden adopting a German shepherd named Major from the Delaware Humane Association in Wilmington, Delaware.
