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.
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