PAKISTAN
Polio workers attacked
A government official said gunmen have killed a driver and wounded a polio worker in a northwestern tribal region ahead of a nationwide anti-polio drive. Manzoor Khan said that yesterday’s attack took place in the Khyber tribal region bordering Afghanistan. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting, though Muslim militants have carried out similar previous attacks. The latest incident came ahead of tomorrow’s anti-polio vaccination drive. Militants oppose the campaign, claiming the vaccine sterilizes children and that Western governments use it to spy on insurgents after the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic. Pakistan detected about 300 polio cases last year.
IRAN
Khamenei said to send letter
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has responded to overtures from US President Barack Obama amid nuclear talks by sending him a secret letter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Citing an Iranian diplomat, the paper said the cleric had written to Obama in recent weeks in response to a presidential letter sent in October last year. Obama’s letter suggested the possibility of cooperation in fighting the Islamic State group if a nuclear deal was secured, the paper said, quoting the diplomat. Khamenei’s letter was “respectful,” but noncommittal, it quoted the diplomat as saying. Both the White House and the Iranian mission to the UN declined to comment on the report. Khamenei said this week he could accept a compromise in the nuclear talks and gave his strongest defense yet of President Hassan Rouhani’s decision to negotiate with the West, a policy opposed by some at home.
MEXICO
Bus and freight train collide
A passenger bus and a freight train collided at a grade crossing in northern Mexico on Friday, killing at least 16 people and injuring 22, an official in Nuevo Leon said. The official said the accident occurred in the town of Anahuac, which is near the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. The official was not authorized to be quoted by name. The train’s operator, Kansas City Southern de Mexico, issued a statement confirming there had been “a lamentable accident” between one of its trains and a passenger bus at about 5:25pm. The company said its employees reported “an undetermined number of dead and injured at the scene.” Kansas City Southern did not give a cause for the crash. The Mexican official said investigators were looking into whether the bus driver tried to beat the train to the crossing. The train was operated by the Transporte Frontera line on a route from Nuevo Laredo to the neighboring state of Coahuila.
DR CONGO
WHO assists sea search
The WHO on Friday said it is assisting in the search for as many as 100 people believed missing after their boat sank on the Congo River. Thursday’s accident happened when two boats collided close to the town of Kwamouth, about 200km east of Kinshasa, the WHO said in a statement. The WHO cited survivors as saying there might have been close to 150 people onboard one of the boats. An initial official toll said three people had been killed and 42 rescued, claiming that about 100 passengers were on the stricken vessel. The agency said it was providing medical kits to support a search operation launched by national and provincial authorities, including 100 body bags.
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