AUSTRALIA
Official slams Republicans
Treasurer Wayne Swan, in an unusually blunt criticism of US politics weeks before the presidential election, said “cranks and crazies” had taken over the US’ Republican Party. Swan also labeled the Tea Party wing of the Republicans as “extreme.” “Let’s be blunt and acknowledge the biggest threat to the world’s biggest economy are the cranks and crazies that have taken over the Republican Party,” Swan said in a speech to a conference in Sydney. The Republican Party’s position on the US budget had led a year ago to the deadlock in negotiations, Swan said, to prevent the looming “fiscal cliff” — nearly US$600 billion in planned spending cuts and tax hikes that will bite early next year. “Despite President Obama’s goodwill and strong efforts, the national interest was held hostage by the rise of the extreme Tea Party wing of the Republican Party,” he said.
AFGHANISTAN
US surge troops withrdraw
The last of the 33,000 US soldiers that US President Barack Obama sent to Afghanistan nearly three years ago as part of a military surge has left the country, US defense officials said Thursday. The withdrawal of surge troops, which began in July, follows an unprecedented number of Western soldiers being shot dead by their Afghan colleagues — 51 so far this year — and as anti-West protests sweep Muslim countries. There are still about 68,000 US military forces in Afghanistan, as well as around 40,000 from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force coalition.
MYANMAR
Pussy Riot get unlikely fan
Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is calling for the release of the members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot. At an event organized by Amnesty International on Thursday, Aung San Suu Kyi accepted a bouquet from family members of one of the group’s three members, Nadia Tolokonnikova. The punk band members were sentenced last month to two years in prison for performing an irreverent song mocking Russian President Vladimir Putin inside Moscow’s main cathedral. Responding to a question, Aung San Suu Kyi said: “I don’t see why people should not sing whatever they want to sing.”
SOUTH KOREA
President accepts probe
President Lee Myung-bak yesterday accepted an independent investigation into alleged irregularities surrounding a now-defunct project to build his retirement home after he leaves office. The probe is potentially embarrassing for Lee’s ruling conservative New Frontier Party with December’s presidential election just 90 days away. Lee waived his rights to veto a parliamentary motion calling for a special prosecutor to look into the house scheme, presidential spokesman Park Jeong-ha told reporters.
UNITED STATES
Diamond to go on auction
A 76-carat diamond, billed as one of the most famous in the world, is expected to fetch well over US$15 million when it hits the auction block in November, Christie’s said yesterday. The colossal gem, which Christie’s said was the finest and largest perfect Golconda diamond ever to appear at auction, is perfect in color and is internally flawless. “The legendary Golconda mines in India produced some of the world’s most famous diamonds, including the Dresden Green, the Blue Hope, and the Koh-i-Noor [in the Royal Collection at the Tower of London],” Rahul Kadakia, head of jewelry for Christie’s Americas and Switzerland, told Reuters. The diamond, named the Archduke Joseph Diamond for one of its former owners, is the highlight of Christie’s sale of precious gems in Geneva in November, the auction house said in a statement. A Christie’s spokeswoman said the owner of the diamond wanted to remain anonymous. Prices for rare, top quality diamonds have soared in recent years. Higher prices attained in recent years include the Wittelsbach Diamond — a 17th-century cushion-shaped deep grayish-blue diamond, which sold for US$24.3 million in 2008 at Christie’s in London.
FRANCE
Mammoth relic on sale
Looking for that must-have ornament for a cavernous living room or backyard lawn? Perk up, Sotheby’s is putting a complete mammoth skeleton up for sale in Paris. The auction house plans the Oct. 2 sale as part of a collection of fossils, skeletons, meteors and minerals — and even a dinosaur egg and woolly rhinoceros skeleton — from the Kashiwagi museum in Japan. Sotheby’s said in a statement on Thursday that the skeleton of Mammuthus primigenius, from Siberia, dates to the Middle Paleolithic period when Neanderthals roamed Earth. The house estimates it will go for more than 185,000 euros (US$241,000). The mammoth skeleton, which has been arranged in a bit of an upward-facing pose, measures 3.5m in height — just slightly taller than it is long.
UNITED STATES
Singer arrested over drugs
Singer-songwriter Fiona Apple has been arrested for hashish possession at a West Texas town after a border patrol drug-sniffing dog detected marijuana in her tour bus. Hudspeth County Sheriff’s office spokesman Rusty Flemming says Apple spent Wednesday night in the county jail and was released on Thursday on a US$10,000 bond. Fleming says Apple “had a little tiny amount of pot and hash.” Fleming says marijuana possession in small amounts is a misdemeanor, while hashish in any quantity is a felony in Texas. Apple’s publicist, Ambrosia Healy, did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.
MEXICO
Police shoot gunmen dead
Authorities say three gunmen have been killed after attacking police hunting for inmates who joined in a mass escape from a prison near the US border. The Coahuila State Prosecutor’s office says the gunmen were in a truck in a residential area of the border city of Piedras Negras when they fired on state police officers on Thursday who were helping look for some of the 131 prisoners who fled a nearby prison early in the week. Investigators have yet to determine whether the dead gunmen were escapees. The statement says the truck matches records of a vehicle stolen in San Antonio, Texas. Authorities say the Zetas drug cartel orchestrated the prison break apparently with the help of prison personnel. Three escapees have been recaptured so far.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema