UNITED STATES
Immigration move criticized
Texas led a group of 17 states on Wednesday in suing US President Barack Obama’s administration over its plan to offer up to 5 million undocumented migrants protection from deportation. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Obama’s unilateral immigration reform plans, unveiled last month to bypass congressional gridlock by Republicans, “tramples” on the US constitution. “The president is abdicating his responsibility to faithfully enforce laws that were duly enacted by Congress and attempting to rewrite immigration laws, which he has no authority to do,” Abbott, who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement.
PHILIPPINES
Storm approaches Tacloban
Government forecasters say a powerful storm is likely to slam into the same central region smothered by Typhoon Haiyan last year, prompting villagers to flee from coastal homes and sparking panic buying of food, water and gasoline. Forecasters said yesterday that Typhoon Hagupit, which was packing sustained winds of 195kph and gusts of up to 230kph, might hit Eastern Samar Province tomorrow and barrel inland along the same route.
CHINA
Prisoner transplants to stop
Beijing says it will cease transplanting organs taken from executed prisoners on Jan. 1 in response to human rights concerns, although uncertainties linger over where a replacement supply will come from. The government has previously said it would phase out the practice by sometime early next year. However, state media reports yesterday announced the first firm date for ending the practice, citing the architect of the nation’s transplant system, Huang Jiefu (黃潔夫).
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing