LIBYA
Egyptian diplomats released
Two Egyptian diplomats and an embassy staff member abducted in the country were freed on Sunday after Cairo released a Libyan militia leader who was arrested in Egypt last week, officials from both countries said yesterday. Three Egyptian diplomats still held captive are also expected to be freed soon, an Egyptian security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The six Egyptians were seized on Friday and Saturday in Tripoli. The abductions came hours after the state news agency reported that Egyptian authorities had arrested Shaaban Hadiya, commander of the Revolutionaries Operation Room militia. The three released Egyptians are back at their homes in Tripoli, Ministry of the Interior spokesman Said al-Asswad said. Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Badr Abdelattie attributed their release to official and “unofficial” mediation. He did not elaborate.
SOUTH KOREA
Seoul proposes reunion date
The government yesterday proposed holding reunions from Feb. 17 through Feb. 22 for families separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War at a North Korean mountain resort after Pyongyang last week agreed to resume the reunions. The Ministry of Unification yesterday said in a statement that it has proposed working-level talks for tomorrow to discuss details about the reunions. North Korea did not immediately respond to Seoul’s proposals. Millions of Koreans have been separated since the war. About 22,000 North and South Koreans briefly met with long-lost relatives during past periods of detente, but family reunions have not been held since October 2010 because of bilateral tensions.
PHILIPPINES
Troops battle for peace deal
Troops yesterday attacked a Muslim renegade faction opposed to the government’s newly concluded peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Backed by artillery, soldiers attacked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) guerrillas in Mindanao, triggering fighting that sent hundreds of civilians fleeing, the military said. Regional military spokesman Colonel Dickson Hermoso said the attacks were launched in a bid to arrest about 25 leaders of the BIFF. The attacks were continuing throughout the day, according to Hermoso, who said there were no immediate casualties. Hermoso said the 12,000-strong MILF was helping the military. MILF military spokesman Von al-Haq confirmed that the military had coordinated with the group before the attack. “The BIFF cannot enter [our territories]... they cannot enter there unless they are surrendering,” he said.
INDIA
No life vests on sunken boat
An overcrowded boat which capsized off the Andaman Islands, killing 21 people, was not carrying life jackets and rescuers did not arrive for two hours, officials and survivors said yesterday. A total of 29 people were plucked from the waters on Sunday afternoon and nine are now in hospital, Andaman Secretary for Information Rakesh Bali said. Bali said that an inquiry into the cause of the incident was underway. Bali said the victims were Indian tourists. “I can confirm there were no life jackets on the boat and the amount of passengers that it was carrying was well beyond its capacity,” said V. Narayanasamy, a minister in Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s office. “The inquiry will establish who was at fault and those responsible will receive the maximum punishment.” The victims’ families will get about 200,000 rupees (US$3,200) in compensation, he said.
VATICAN CITY
Dove release goes awry
Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture were attacked by other birds. As tens of thousands of people watched in St Peter’s Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace. One dove lost some feathers as it broke free from the gull. However, the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove. It was not clear what happened to the doves as they flew off. While delivering his weekly Angelus address in St Peter’s Square from the window beforehand, Pope Francis urged the killers of a three-year-old boy murdered in Calabria as part of an apparent mafia hit to repent. The charred body of Nicola Campolongo, known as “Coco,” was found along with that of his grandfather, Giuseppe Iannicelli, and a young Moroccan woman in a burned-out car in the town of Cassano Jonio near Cosenza last week. Media reported that Iannicelli was linked to drug trafficking.
ITALY
Moroccans sew lips shut
Thirteen Moroccan immigrants held in a migrant center on the outskirts of Rome have sewn their lips together in the second such protest at their lengthy detention, media reported on Sunday. The men, aged between 20 and 30, had already stitched their mouths shut in a week-long protest last month over their long stay in a supposedly short-term detention facility. They had only ended that protest at the Ponte Galeria facility south of Rome after assurance that their cases would be speedily dealt with. “It is clear that time in politics moves more slowly than it does for these people, who have gone from the drama of a difficult immigration journey to places of little dignity such as the detention centers,” said Angiolo Marroni, a state official charged with protecting prisoners’ welfare in the Lazio region. “I hope that parliament keeps its word and quickly approves the necessary regulations to put an end to this shame.”
UNITED STATES
More cold for Midwest
A persistent weather pattern driving bitterly cold air south out of the Arctic will cause temperatures from Minnesota to Kentucky to plummet again, turning this winter into one of the coldest on record in some areas. Temperatures will remain in the grips of the deep freeze for two-and-a-half days, said meteorologist Mike Hudson of the National Weather Service in Kansas City, Missouri. With the wind chill, cities throughout the Midwest will feel far colder than the minus-20°C that Hudson said was expected in Barrow, Alaska. In the Chicago area, residents were bracing for a historic deep freeze. Temperatures could remain below minus-18°C today as well and remain below zero for a total of 60 hours — the longest stretch since temperatures stayed below zero for a record 98 hours in 1983.
VENEZUELA
Rallies against crime held
Thousands of people on Sunday marched against crime in Caracas and other cities. President Nicolas Maduro, who rallied supporters to come together under the motto “For peace and for life,” said: “Today we are all together in our demand: enough violence already. Either we build peace in our society together, or there will not be any peace in our society.” The nation has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with 79 murders per 100,000 inhabitants last year, according to the non-profit Venezuelan Violence Monitor.
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