MEXICO
Official charged with graft
Authorities arrested on Saturday a former top official at the state-run electricity company who was implicated since last year in taking millions of dollars in bribes from foreign companies. Authorities asked that Nestor Moreno, the former director of operations at the Federal Electricity Commission be held without bail to face charges of corruption after he was found at an airport near Mexico City, the federal attorney general’s office said in a statement. Local media have followed allegations against Moreno since last year, reporting that he had been given a yacht worth nearly US$2 million, a Ferrari and hundreds of thousands of dollars as bribes from companies in exchange for government contracts.
TRINIDAD
State of emergency extended
The People’s Partnership coalition government tabled a motion in parliament on Saturday to extend the nationwide state of emergency for an additional three months. The opposition People’s National Movement refuses to support the bill and says that the emergency, which was initially declared on Aug. 21, is unnecessary and poorly executed. However, the government, which controls 29 of the 42 seats in the House of Representatives, needs only a simple majority to extend the emergency and is expected to win comfortably when it comes to a vote. National Security Minister Brigadier John Sandy officially requested a three-month extension on Friday, saying it was needed to maintain pressure on criminal elements within the society.
CUBA
Dog raises pigs
Yeti the dog already had a litter of pups to care for when the piglets adopted her as a second mom. Ever since then, the farm dog has been pulling double-duty, nursing not just her own young, but also the 14 swine. Farmer Mannorkys Santamaria said the piglets also take milk from their mothers, but when they see Yeti, they run to her for a meal. On a recent day the young porkers followed her around the farm as if she were their real mother.
UNITED STATES
Amazon boss’ rocket fails
An unmanned spacecraft bankrolled by Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos failed during a recent test flight. In a brief online post on Friday, Bezos said: “We lost the vehicle” at 13,716m. Bezos founded Blue Origin to develop a rocketship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. It recently won money from NASA to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi now that the space shuttle fleet is retired. The mishap occurred during a test flight last week from Blue Origin’s West Texas spaceport in Van Horn, Texas.
RUSSIA
Islamists kill folk healer
A folk healer has been shot dead in the Ingushetia region, part of the North Caucasus where militants seek to root out “un-Islamic” practices and establish an independent state, officials said. The Moscow-based investigators said the bullet-riddled body of Movladi Buzurtanov, 69, was found on Saturday near his home in the village of Nesterovskaya. An official with regional police said Buzurtanov was a folk healer who used traditional practices and made amulets and charms. Speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record, she said his murder was “most likely” linked to his vocation. Healers and fortune-tellers have come under attack from radical insurgents who consider their practices un-Islamic.
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