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Lasantha appointed COPA chairman

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3 charged in connection with Liam Payne’s death

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Three people have been charged in connection with the death of One Direction star Liam Payne, Argentinian authorities have said.

The singer died on 16 October after falling from the third-floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires.

One person who accompanied the artist has been charged with the abandonment of a person followed by death and the supply and facilitation of drugs, according to the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office.

A hotel employee and a third person have also been charged with supplying drugs. None of those arrested have been named.

Payne, 31, a father-of-one, was one of the most recognisable names in pop after appearing on The X Factor and rising to fame with the boyband One Direction in the 2010s.

Argentinian authorities have been investigating Payne’s final days at the CasaSur hotel.

After the singer’s death, police found substances in his hotel room, and destroyed objects and furniture. Hotel staff had made two calls to emergency services saying they had a guest who had taken “too many drugs and alcohol”, and was “trashing the entire room”, it was previously reported.

On Thursday, the public prosecutor’s office said toxicology tests revealed traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his body.

A post-mortem examination determined his cause of death as “multiple trauma” and “internal and external haemorrhage” as a result of the fall from the hotel balcony.

According to the prosecutor’s office, medical reports also suggested Payne may have fallen in a state of semi or total unconsciousness.

The prosecutor’s office say this rules out the possibility of a conscious or voluntary act by Payne, and they conclude he did not know what he was doing nor did he understand it.

In addition, authorities have carried out nine raids at homes in Buenos Aires.

They are also continuing to investigate Payne’s broken laptop and other devices seized.

The prosecutor’s office added it has examined more than 800 hours of video footage from security cameras in the hotel and on public roads, and received dozens of testimonies from hotel staff, family members, friends and medical professionals.

The singer’s body was released to his family on Wednesday to be flown back to the UK.

Following Payne’s death, tributes flooded in including from his former partner Cheryl, One Direction bandmates and music mogul Simon Cowell.

Payne’s bandmates Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles said in a joint statement that they were “completely devastated” and will miss the singer “terribly”, adding the “memories we shared with him will be treasured forever”.

Thousands of fans also remembered the late singer at memorial events in the UK and around the world.

(BBC News)

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Squid Game’s Player 456 returns in season 2 trailer

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The first trailer for the second season of Squid Game has been released, thrusting viewers back into the deadly arena where Player 456 has returned to play once more.

Three years after his victory in the lethal series of children’s games Seong Gi-hun, played by actor Lee Jung-jae, returns as Player 456 and is joined by hundreds of new competitors – and tries to lead them to safety.

The first season of the South Korean drama followed a group of 456 people, desperate and in debt, fighting to the death for a huge cash prize.

It became Netflix’s biggest ever series launch, streamed by 111 million users in its first 28 days.

The trailer opens as the sinister masked guards welcome a new cast of characters to the competition.

They are despatched for their first game, also familiar from season one: Red Light Green Light.

In the game, players must advance toward the finish line while a giant mechanical doll has its back turned and freeze when it turns around – or face being shot dead.

Gi-hun only just survived the game in season one, launching himself over the finish line, and this time around tries to coach the players to safety.

But things take a lethal turn when a player moves after being told a bee has landed on her, and is then shot in the head.

As in season one, the players get to vote to stop the game or keep playing. While Gi-hun encourages them to focus on “getting out of this place,” the players ignore his pleas.

“One more game,” they chant, as the cash prize fills a giant piggy-bank dangling above them.

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk said: “Gi-hun’s endeavour to find out who these people are and why they do what they do is the core story of season two.”

He told Reuters news agency that the season would feature “more intriguing games” and a larger cast of characters than the debut season.

Also returning is the black-masked mysterious Front Man, who oversees the games, and Hwang Jun-ho, the police detective that broke into the games last season to search for his missing brother.

Hwang Dong-hyuk previously said he felt “a lot of pressure” on how to make season two “even better” after the show’s runaway success.

In its first four weeks, viewers spent 1.65 billion hours watching Squid Game, according to Netflix.

It followed efforts by the streaming giant to increase its offering of international shows and invest in South Korean dramas.

This time Netflix will be hoping to mirror season one’s success as it comes under pressure to show what will power growth in the years ahead, as its already massive reach makes finding new subscribers more difficult.

Netflix has announced that the final, third season of Squid Game will be released in 2025.

The second series of Squid Game will be released on Netflix on 26 December 2024.

(BBC News)

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TikTok founder becomes China’s richest man

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The surging global popularity of TikTok has seen the co-founder of its parent company, ByteDance, become China’s richest person.

According to a rich list produced by the Hurun Research Institute, Zhang Yiming is now worth $49.3bn (£38bn) – 43% more than in 2023.

The 41-year-old stepped down from his role in charge of the company in 2021, but is understood to own around 20% of the firm.

TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps in the world, despite deep concerns in some countries about its ties to the Chinese state.

While both companies insist they are independent of the Chinese government, the US intends to ban TikTok in January 2025 unless ByteDance sells it.

Despite facing that intense pressure in the US, ByteDance’s global profit increased by 60% last year, driving up Zhang Yiming’s personal fortune.

“Zhang Yiming is the 18th new Number One we have had in China in just 26 years,” said head of Hurun Rupert Hoogewerf.

“The US, by comparison, has only four Number Ones: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

“This gives an indication of some of the dynamism in the Chinese economy.”

Tech fortunes
Mr Zhang is not the only representative of China’s huge tech sector on the list.

Pony Ma, boss of the tech conglomerate, Tencent, is third on the list with an estimated personal wealth amounting to £44.4bn.

But their fortunes are not just explained by their companies successes – their rivals have made less in a year in which China’s economy has sputtered.

In fact, only approximately 30% of the people on the list had an increase in their net worth – the rest saw a decline.

“The Hurun China Rich List has shrunk for an unprecedented third year running, as China’s economy and stock markets had a difficult year,” said Mr Hoogewerf.

“The number of individuals on the list was down by 12% in the past year to just under 1100 individuals and 25% from the high point of 2021.”

He said the data showed it had been a good year for smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, while the green energy market had stumbled.

“Solar panel, lithium battery and EV makers have had a challenging year, as competition intensified, leading to a glut, and the threat of tariffs added to uncertainties,” he said.

“Solar panel makers saw their wealth down as much as 80% from the 2021 peak, whilst battery and EV makers were down by half and a quarter respectively.”

(BBC News)

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