World news in brief
Oscar Pistorius pleads for forgiveness
Convicted killer and former Olympian Oscar Pistorius has pleaded for forgiveness from the family of his victim, saying: “I want to tell them I’m sorry.” The South African sprinter was jailed for 13 years for shooting girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his Pretoria home in 2013.
A friend of Pistorius who has visited him in jail reportedly said the disgraced athlete was asking to be forgiven by Steenkamp’s bereaved family members. Bill Schroder, the athlete’s former headteacher, told The Sun on Sunday: “What he really, really wants is forgiveness. I said to him that if he had killed my daughter, I doubt I would forgive him. He is more concerned about forgiveness than actually getting out on parole.”
In 2018, Steenkamp’s mother June said she had forgiven Pistorius but had no interest in talking to him. Ms Steenkamp added that she had not personally told Pistorius he was forgiven. Mr Schroder also said Pistorius “still maintains to this day it was an accident.”
Asteroid identified last month may be space junk
An “asteroid” spotted by a Hawaii telescope last month and added to the official tally may in fact be space junk from a failed moon landing 54 years ago, scientists have concluded. The object, known as “asteroid 2020 SO”, is heading towards our planet and will be captured by Earth’s gravity in mid-November.
It will spend about four months circling Earth, experts believe, before shooting back out into its own orbit around the sun next March.
But Nasa’s leading asteroid expert has said he now believes it it not an asteroid. He believes it is part of a rocket. “I’m pretty jazzed about this,” Paul Chodas said. “It’s been a hobby of mine to find one of these and draw such a link, and I’ve been doing it for decades now.”
Chodas speculates that the object is actually the Centaur upper rocket stage that successfully propelled Nasa’s Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it was discarded.
Man shot dead during rival protests in Denver
A man has been shot dead during opposing protests by right- and left-wing activists in the US city of Denver, Colorado. A video on Twitter appears to show the conflict leading up to the gunfire and a photographer for The Denver Post captured an image of the altercation as a man sprays a chemical agent at another man with a drawn handgun.
The man who was shot was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died an hour later, NBC News affiliate the Kusa TV station said. Police arrested a suspect who Kusa said was working as a security guard for its crew.
Denver Police Department chief of investigations, Joe Montoya, would not confirm if the suspect worked for the station. He said two guns and a can of mace were found at the scene. Neither the victim nor the suspected shooter has been identified by authorities.
Floods kill 17 people in Vietnam
At least 17 people have been killed by floods in Vietnam’s central provinces in the past week and 13 are still missing, state media said yesterday as the country braced for another tropical storm. The central region is preparing for Typhoon Linfa, which will bring more rains and result in more flooding.
Footage aired by state broadcaster Vietnam Television showed fishermen being rescued by coastguard and helicopters as strong winds battered the central Vietnamese coast in the province of Quang Tri. Floods have cut food supplies to thousands of people. Around 31,000 people have been displaced and more than 33,000 houses submerged and damaged by floods, according to a government report.
Vietnam is prone to destructive storms and flooding due to its long coastline. Natural disasters – predominantly floods and landslides triggered by storms – killed 132 people and injured 207 others in the country last year.