BRAZIL
Cuban doctors arrive
More than 200 Cuban doctors have arrived in the country to work in impoverished areas where physicians and medical services are scarce in Latin America’s biggest country, the Ministry of Health said on Saturday. Ministry press officer Ed Ruas said 206 doctors arrived in the city of Recife to take a connecting flight to Brasilia, the capital. He said another 194 doctors were to arrive yesterday in the city of Salvador. The 400 are the first of an expected 4,000 physicians from Cuba who will eventually work in the country. About 250 doctors from other countries arrived in Brazil on Friday, along with Brazilians who studied abroad. They and the Cubans are part of the “More Doctors” program to get more physicians working in underserved areas. Foreign doctors in the program will receive the equivalent of US$4,080 a month. In the case of the Cubans, the country will send their wages to Cuba’s government through the Pan American Health Organization and Havana will decide how much each doctor will receive.
MEXICO
Drug lord’s release appealed
Federal prosecutors have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court against a court’s decision to free a drug lord. The Attorney General’s office says it has asked the country’s highest court to review a federal court’s decision to release Rafael Caro Quintero because the court’s arguments are “absurd and illogical.” Caro Quintero was 28 years into a 40-year sentence for helping orchestrate the 1985 killing of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. He has disappeared from the public eye since his release two weeks ago. A three-judge federal appeals court overturned his sentence in Camarena’s case on procedural grounds, saying he should have been tried in a state court instead of federal court.
COLOMBIA
Peace talks to restart
The government has announced that peace talks with the country’s largest guerrilla army will be renewed today in Cuba after the rebels temporarily walked away from the negotiations. Almost simultaneously, the army said that 13 members of the military were killed in a rebel ambush on Saturday in Arauca Province, about 390km northeast of the capital, Bogota. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, temporarily walked away from the talks on Friday over President Juan Manuel Santos’ refusal to agree to modify the constitution if a peace pact is struck. On Saturday, government negotiator Humberto De la Calle said: “After an evaluation, it is confirmed that the FARC has made the decision to return to the negotiating table at 8:30am on Monday to continue the talks.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Helicopter crash kills four
Four people were killed when a helicopter carrying oil workers crashed into the sea off Scotland’s Shetland Islands, raising fresh questions about safety in the remote North Sea energy sector. Fourteen people were rescued after the Super Puma L2 helicopter, made by EADS unit Eurocopter, came down — the fourth incident in the area involving different models of the widely used aircraft in just more than four years. Scottish police said three bodies had been recovered and work was underway to recover the body of the fourth person. Sky News said the fourth body was in the wreckage. The helicopter hit the sea as it approached Sumburgh airport.
CHINA
Fewer Japanese visits
The number of Japanese tourists visiting Beijing fell by more than half in the first six months of the year amid a spike in tensions between the countries, official statistics show. Beijing’s statistics bureau said yesterday that 136,000 Japanese tourists visited the capital between January and last month. That was down 53.7 percent from the same period last year. The drop follows violent anti-Japanese protests in Beijing and several other cities in September last year in response to complaints from the government over Japan’s move to nationalize uninhabited East China Sea islands claimed by the country. Japanese businesses were torched and Japanese-brand cars were smashed, despite having been locally made. There were also scattered reports of assaults on Japanese citizens, although none of the attacks were serious.
CHINA
Cockroaches escape farm
At least 1 million cockroaches have escaped a farm where they were being bred for use in traditional medicine, a report said. The cockroaches fled the facility in Dafeng, Jiangsu Province, for surrounding cornfields earlier this month after an “unknown perpetrator” destroyed the plastic greenhouse where they were raised, the Modern Express newspaper said. Disease control authorities have sent five investigators to the area to come up with a plan to stamp out the insects. Farm owner Wang Pengsheng invested more than 100,000 yuan (US$16,000) in 102kg of Periplaneta americana eggs after spending six months developing a business plan, the report on Friday said. The cockroach is generally considered a pest, but believers in traditional Chinese medicine — which uses both plants and animals, including endangered species — say extracts from it can treat diseases including cancer, reduce inflammation and improve immunity.
AFGHANISTAN
Karzai talks about US killer
The day after a military jury sentenced US Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 40, to life in prison without the possibility of release — the most severe punishment possible — President Hamid Karzai said: “A life sentence to him or a death sentence to him will not bring back our children that he killed.” Many Afghans had wanted him to receive the death penalty. Bales pleaded guilty in June in a deal to avoid the death penalty for his raids near his outpost on March 11 last year, in which he shot 22 people — 17 of them women and children.
YEMEN
Air force bus bomb kills six
At least six people were killed and 26 wounded yesterday in a bomb attack on a bus carrying air force personnel to base in the capital Sana’a, witnesses and medics said. Ameen Saree, an air force officer who rushed to the scene, said a bomb had been planted in the vehicle. “The bomb exploded in the rear part of the bus and six of our colleagues were immediately killed,” Saree said. The country has been gripped by turmoil since pro-democracy protests against former president Ali Abdullah Saleh broke out in early 2011. Attacks against military personnel are more common in the largely lawless south and east where an Islamist insurgency is still raging. The nation is one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. Next door to world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, it is also battling a powerful branch of al-Qaeda that US officials say is the most dangerous of the global network.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese