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.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing