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.
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