MEXICO
Protest over energy reform
Tens of thousands of people marched in Mexico City on Friday to protest constitutional reforms pushed through by President Enrique Pena Nieto that open the oil and gas industry to foreign investment. An estimated 65,000 people gathered for the protest in the main square, an official at the Secretariat of Public Safety said. About 2,500 police officers were deployed, but there were no incidents of violence, the official said. The march was organized by the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution. The reforms were approved in congress and ratified by a majority of states late last year.
UNITED STATES
Obama to visit Saudi
President Barack Obama plans to travel to Saudi Arabia next month on a mission to smooth tensions with Riyadh over policy on Iran’s nuclear program and the civil war in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Obama is preparing to meet with King Abdullah for a summit, the paper said, citing unnamed Arab officials briefed on the meetings. “This is about a deteriorating relationship” and declining trust, a senior Arab official said in discussing the need for the summit, which was pulled together in recent days, the newspaper reported. A White House spokeswoman declined to comment.
UNITED STATES
No immunity for India envoy
Federal prosecutors say an Indian diplomat who was strip-searched when arrested on charges she fraudulently obtained a work visa for her housekeeper and lied about the housekeeper’s pay is not covered by diplomatic immunity. Prosecutors say in papers filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court that since Devyani Khobragade is no longer in the country, she is not immune from prosecution. The papers also say the immunity she would have enjoyed at the consular level would not protect against the charges in this case. Khobragade was the deputy consul-general in New York City. The Department of State ordered to her to leave the country last month following her indictment.
ECUADOR
Paper fined over cartoon
The media oversight agency fined the newspaper El Universo for a cartoon it published about prosecutors’ Dec. 27 search of the home of a journalist who has since left the country, authorities said on Friday. The agency also said Xavier Bonilla has 72 hours to “correct” his cartoon, which portrays soldiers slamming a door down onto Fernando Villavicencio and hauling computers and boxes of files from his home. Villavicencio investigates oil industry corruption and President Rafael Correa’s administration said he illegally obtained e-mails from Correa’s account. The agency said the cartoon “did not correspond to reality.” It fined El Universo 2 percent of its revenues from the past three months.
UNITED STATES
Warships off to Black Sea
Officials say the first of two warships heading into the Black Sea in advance of the Olympic Games has sailed from Italy. The USS Mount Whitney got under way on Friday from Gaeta and the frigate USS Taylor was expected to leave from Naples yesterday. The officials spoke about the warships on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly disclose ship movements. The FBI also said at least two dozen agents are going to Sochi, Russia. FBI Director James Comey said Russian authorities face a serious threat and he wants the FBI to be ready to help.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the