THE oldest United States Second World War veteran has died aged 112.
Richard Overton, pictured, centre, who was thought to be the oldest man in the US, died on Thursday in Texas.
He was in his 30s when he volunteered for the army and was at Pearl Harbour just after the Japanese attack in 1941.
The veteran once said that one secret to his long life was smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, which he often was found doing on the porch of his Austin home.
Overton was hospitalised with pneumonia but was released on Christmas Eve, said Shirley Overton, whose husband was Richard’s cousin and longtime caretaker.
In 2013, former US president Barack Obama honoured Overton at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. “He was there at Pearl Harbour, when the battleships were still smouldering,” Obama said of Overton.
“He was there at Okinawa. He was there at Iwo Jima, where he said, ‘I only got out of there by the grace of God.’”
Meanwhile, Bahrain has said it will resume operations at its embassy in Syria, reflecting new efforts to improve relations with President Bashar al-Assad, left, as the war winds down.
The announcement came a day after the United Arab Emirates reopened its embassy in Damascus with a flag-raising ceremony before journalists and camera crews.
The concerted moves come seven years after Gulf Arab states recalled their ambassadors and shut their embassies in Syria to isolate Assad.
Syria was expelled from the 22-member Arab League in 2011.
The country’s military, meanwhile, has taken control of a Kurdish-held town where Turkey has threatened an offensive.
The announcement was welcomed by the Kremlin, whose spokesman Dmitry Peskov, pictured, left, called it a “positive step” that could help stabilise the situation.
Turkey, which views the Kurdish militia as a terrorist group, had been threatening a military operation against the town of Manbij.
In Europe, an aid boat carrying more than 300 migrants rescued at sea has arrived in Spain after a week’s journey across the western Mediterranean.
The boat rescued 313 migrants in waters near Libya last week but had to travel to Spain after Malta denied it permission to dock, and Italy and other countries refused to help.
Three of the migrants were later evacuated for health reasons.
And conservationists in Indonesia have warned that the entire species of the critically endangered Javan rhino could be wiped out if a tsunami were to strike again. They once roamed the jungles of South East Asia and India, but today only 67 exist in the Ujung Kulon National Park, which was hit by last week’s tsunami.
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