SOUTH KOREA
North proposes talks
North Korea has proposed holding talks with South Korea to ease tensions and improve relations, the North’s Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. It said the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly made the offer in a letter on Wednesday to the South’s National Assembly.
CHINA
Fireworks set off hotel fire
A fire set off by fireworks to celebrate the Lunar New Year destroyed a five-star hotel in the northeast, according to Xinhua news agency. It said the fire gutted the hotel in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, before dawn yesterday. There were no causalities. Xinhua said firefighters had trouble dealing with the fire because their fire engines shot water up only 50m, while the building was 219m tall.
AFGHANISTAN
Trust in police down
A UN survey indicates the reputation of the local police has deteriorated in the south in the past year, despite an intensive campaign by US troops to build up local security forces. The survey released yesterday said the countrywide reputation of the police was good: 79 percent of Afghans had a favorable view of the police and 34 percent said their confidence in the police had grown in the past year. However, in the south, only 48 percent of respondents said they had a “somewhat favorable” or “very favorable” opinion of the police in their area, down from 67 percent a year ago.
PAKISTAN
US suspect detained further
A judge ruled yesterday that police could keep holding a US embassy employee accused of killing two Pakistanis for at least eight more days, officials said. The US says the American, identified by Pakistanis as Raymond Allen Davis, has diplomatic immunity and that Pakistan must free him. US officials say he shot the two Pakistanis in Lahore because they were trying to rob him. Another judge has instructed that the American be placed on the “exit control list” so that he cannot leave the country.
UNITED STATES
Parents get long probation
A fundamentalist Christian couple who tried relying on prayer to cure their dying toddler must take their remaining children for medical check-ups as part of their sentence in the boy’s death. A Philadelphia judge also sentenced Herbert and Catherine Schaible to 10 years of probation on Wednesday. They were convicted in December of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment in the death of their two-year-old son from pneumonia.
UNITED STATES
Museum cuts exhibit
A museum just days away from opening a long-awaited exhibit including two mummies and other historical artifacts from China is gutting the display of all objects at the request of Chinese officials, the museum announced on Wednesday. The artifacts were part of “Secrets of the Silk Road,” which is scheduled to open on Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. The exhibit has already traveled to museums in California and Texas without issue. Visitors to the Philadelphia museum will see a pared-down exhibit. Penn museum spokeswoman Pam Kosty said she could not offer any more information beyond a statement saying Chinese officials had requested the items not be shown. She declined to identify the officials. Attempts to reach the Chinese consulate for comment were unsuccessful because of the Lunar New Year holiday.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion