CHINA
China media blast ‘hijack’
The state-run Global Times said six suspects arrested in an attempted plane hijacking in Xinjiang on Friday are all Uighur men. State media say the men tried to hijack a plane that took off from Hotan for Urumqi, but their efforts were foiled by passengers and flight crew. The German-based World Uyghur Congress says it was not a hijacking attempt, but an in-flight brawl over a seat dispute. Spokesman Dilxat Raxit says Beijing should not use the incident to launch another crackdown on minority Uighurs.
CHINA
Mudslides claim 50 lives
The Civil Affairs Ministry says mudslides caused by heavy rains have killed 50 and left another 42 missing. The agency said in an online statement on Friday that storms have ravaged 11 provinces and regions — mainly in the south — since June 20 and triggered the deadly mudslides. The ministry says about 440,000 people have been relocated and that tens of thousands of homes are severely damaged. The death toll continues to rise. The state-run China News Service reported yesterday that four people were killed and another 37 missing from a severe mudslide in Sichuan Province.
CHINA
Earthquake rocks Xinjiang
A strong earthquake jolted Xinjiang early yesterday, shaking buildings and cutting off electricity and injuring at least 17 people. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 6.3, while China’s Earthquake Networks Center put it at 6.6. Xinhua news agency said most of the victims were tourists. The quake toppled several buildings in Urumqi, Xinhua said, adding that rescuers had been dispatched to the area to search for casualties. An official from the Xinjiang Earthquake Bureau said the quake was “strongly felt” in Urumqi. The man, who gave only his surname, Jian, said Urumqi residents rushed into the streets when the quake hit but returned home after 6am.
UNITED STATES
Vietnamese in ‘terror case’
Authorities on Friday announced terrorism-related charges against a Vietnamese man suspected of helping militants in Yemen affiliated with al-Qaeda. Minh Quang Pham, 29, was charged with traveling from Britain to Yemen in December 2010, where federal prosecutors said he pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He spent a year in Yemen, where he is accused of receiving “military-type” training and of helping with the group’s online propaganda before returning to Britain. Pham, who is in custody in Britain, is charged with five criminal counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group. He faces a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
UNITED STATES
Envoy to Myanmar confirmed
The US Senate on Friday confirmed President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the first US ambassador to Myanmar in more than 20 years. Derek Mitchell, a veteran US policymaker on Asia, was confirmed by unanimous consent in one of the final acts by the Senate before it went on a one-week recess. In congratulating Mitchell, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the diplomat “has done an excellent job in his current role as special representative and policy coordinator for Burma … His experience will serve us well in the region as he builds on the strong foundation established by [Charge d’Affaires] Michael Thurston and our embassy team in Rangoon.”
MEXICO
Drug leader extradited to US
The government has extradited a drug gang leader to face charges that he played a key part in the daylight execution of a US consulate employee two years ago, officials said on Friday. Arturo Gallegos is suspected of ordering the killing of a US consulate worker on the streets of Ciudad Juarez in an ongoing effort by the Barrio Azteca drug gang to control a smuggling route, officials said. Local authorities have said the gang ordered the killing because the consular officer was thought to have given visas to members of a rival gang, although this might have been a case of mistaken identity.
COLOMBIA
Court relaxes laws on drugs
The Constitutional Court has ruled that people cannot be jailed for possessing cocaine and marijuana for personal use. The decision ratifies a previous Supreme Court ruling that said people cannot be jailed for possession of a so-called personal dose. A 2009 law placed the dose at up to 20g of marijuana and 1g of cocaine. Thursday’s ruling came in a challenge to a citizen’s security law that specified persons found with up to 1kg of marijuana or 100g of cocaine should be punished with at least 64 months in prison. Chief prosecutor Eduardo Montealegre said on Friday that the decision does not amount to drug legalization.
MEXICO
Explosion injures seven
Authorities say an explosion in a pickup truck has wounded seven people outside city hall in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Officials said that a grenade went off around 11:15am on Friday in the truck parked outside the main municipal building. The seven victims were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, a statement from local officials said. The facade of the city building was damaged, along with nearby cars. Nuevo Laredo has been the scene of brutal battles between the Zetas cartel and its former ally, the Gulf cartel.
PANAMA
Canal plan behind schedule
A massive project aiming to widen the Panama Canal has fallen six months behind schedule, meaning the new locks may not be operational until 2015, the waterway’s chief administrator said on Friday. “The company is trying to catch up with lost time,” Panama Canal Authority chief executive officer Alberto Aleman Zubieta said in an interview aired on television station Telemetro. The project was originally scheduled for completion in 2014. Roughly 5 percent of international commerce passes through the waterway, an 80km stretch connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The new locks will accommodate larger ships with a capacity of 12,000 containers — instead of those with 5,000 containers currently able to navigate the canal.
UNITED STATES
Stolen Dali recovered
The Postal Inspection Service says a stolen Salvador Dali painting has been mailed back to New York from Europe and was intercepted at Kennedy International Airport. The US$150,000 work of art was swiped from a Madison Avenue art gallery last week by a man who walked out with the watercolor and ink painting in a shopping bag. Inspection service spokeswoman Donna Harris told the New York Times the gallery received an e-mail this week that said the painting had been sent back. A tracking number was included. The gallery contacted police and the painting was intercepted on Friday. No arrests have been made.
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