Briefly

KUWAIT

Fire kills 49 in building housing workers

Forty-nine people have died in a major blaze in a residential building housing foreign workers in Kuwait, the interior ministry said on Wednesday. First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Fahad Yusuf Al-Sabah ordered the detention of individuals involved, including the building owner, until the forensic evidence team completes its investigation, local media reported. Mohammed Al-Gharib, director of public relations at the General Fire Force, said that the fire broke out in a six-story residential building densely populated with labor workers.

MALAWI

State funeral for vice-president announced

The Malawi government said on Wednesday that Vice-President Saulos Chilima will be honored with a state funeral after he died in a plane crash along with eight other people. President Lazarus Chakwera announced 21 days of national mourning on Tuesday, when the wreckage of the small military plane carrying Chilima and a former first lady was discovered in a mountainous area in the country's north. Chakwera has appointed a ministerial committee to oversee preparations for Chilima's state funeral. No date was announced.

FRANCE

Singer Francoise Hardy dies at 80

French singer Francoise Hardy has died at the age of 80, her son Thomas Dutronc announced on Tuesday. Hardy became a pop icon and fashion muse of the 1960s and beyond. In 1962, she broke through at just 18 with her first hit Tous les Garcons et les Filles, or All the Boys and Girls. Her career spanned more than 50 years and almost 30 studio albums. She was the only French artist to appear in a 2023 ranking of the 200 greatest singers of all time published by Rolling Stone magazine. Hardy had struggled with cancer since 2004.

UNITED STATES

Musk drops lawsuit against OpenAI

Elon Musk on Tuesday dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for betraying the startup's founding mission. Musk had accused the AI firm he helped set up in 2015 of breaching a commitment to creating artificial intelligence that benefits society when it became a for-profit enterprise backed by Microsoft. Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018, argued in his original complaint that the ChatGPT maker was always intended as a nonprofit entity. A filing by an attorney representing Musk asked the court to dismiss the entire case, without offering a reason.

Agencies - Xinhua