COSTA RICA
Volcano disrupts flights
Smoke and ash spewing high into the sky from the Turrialba volcano led officials to cancel classes in a dozen nearby schools on Friday and disrupted operations at the nation’s main airport. The Juan Santamaria international airport in the capital, San Jose, reopened around midday on Friday after remaining closed through Thursday night. The Turrialba volcano erupted three times on Thursday and state observers recorded a smaller eruption on Friday morning. The air security agency said ash on the runways could pose a risk as could the impaired visibility from the plume of ash.
COLOMBIA
Six FARC fighters killed
Six suspected Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighters were killed in military operations this week, the army said, at a fragile time when the leftist guerrilla group is conducting a unilateral ceasefire. According to an army statement, military operations in the southwestern department of Huila and the central region of Tolima also resulted in the capture of 18 other guerrilla suspects. The Marxist FARC rebels declared an indefinite, unilateral ceasefire on Dec. 18 and peace talks with the government have been under way in Havana since 2012.
CHILE
Blaze threatens port city
The government on Friday declared a state of emergency and precautionary evacuation of up to 16,000 people as a raging forest fire threatened the historic port city of Valparaiso, where 15 people died in blazes last year. The fire started on Friday in an area of grassland and pine forest near a major thoroughfare connecting Valparaiso — a UNESCO world heritage site — with several villages. Warm temperatures and strong winds fanned the flames and the blaze was spreading, destroying about 500 hectares of land and advancing to within just a few kilometers of Valparaiso. There were no immediate reports of death or injury, but the national emergency office declared a red alert in the area.
HONDURAS
US man tested for Ebola
A US citizen has been hospitalized while he is screened for Ebola, health authorities said on Friday. The 66-year-old American, who has not been identified, had spent time in Liberia before coming to Honduras on Wednesday, they said. Although he did not have any symptoms when he arrived in the country, he was hospitalized with a 38?C fever on Friday in Comayagua, about an hour north of the capital Tegucigalpa, hospital owner Juviny Ochoa said. Deputy Minister of Health Francis Contreras told local television that authorities were taking precautions because the patient had been in an African country.
UNITED STATES
Fed leak probe questioned
House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling said he has been informed by the Federal Reserve’s inspector general that “there is currently an open criminal investigation” into the leak of confidential Fed information in 2012. Bloomberg News previously reported that potentially market-moving inside details of the Federal Open Market Committee’s September 2012 meeting were published by Medley Global Advisors in a report to clients on Oct. 3 that year, one day before the Fed released minutes of the gathering. Hensarling wrote to both Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Inspector General Mark Bialek on Friday requesting more information on the leak. He also said that Fed Board officials dropped the matter after an initial probe.
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