EL SALVADOR
Fifty-one killed in one day
The small Central American nation has recorded another milestone in criminal violence: At least 51 people were killed in a single day this week, the National Civil Police force said on Friday. Thursday’s toll surpassed the mark of 45 killed on Saturday last week as gang violence continues to plague the country of 6 million people. Authorities have said the surge in violence is a result of a government crackdown that has led to gunfights between police and criminals, as well as gang battles over territory. Police on Friday also reported finding the body of a slain police officer — the 45th officer this year to die at the hands of gangs. Sixteen soldiers and six prison guards also have been killed. The government said 3,942 people were slain last year, an increase of 1,429 from 2013.
VENEZUELA
Maduro seeks China funds
President Nicolas Maduro is to go cap in hand to China and Vietnam this weekend, with his oil-rich country mired in recession. Maduro, under pressure to alleviate crippling shortages of even the most basic everyday goods, announced the trip on Friday at a rally outside the presidential palace in Caracas. The nation, hard-hit by plunging global oil revenues and reeling from soaring crime, needed heavyweight financial support in “difficult times,” he said. “Tomorrow I will go to Vietnam and China to make arrangements for the economic and financial security of Venezuela,” he told supporters, saying he had invitations from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近) and Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. To raise badly needed cash, Maduro’s government in April secured a US$5 billion loan from Beijing, a major political and economic ally. China — which is ramping up its presence in South America — has been a key supporter of Venezuela since former president Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999.
FRANCE
Conmen target minister
Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian has taken legal action after conmen impersonated him in a series of phonecalls with African leaders in a bid to obtain money, his office said on Friday. According to the pan-African weekly magazine Jeune Afrique, several African presidents were contacted by someone posing as Le Drian who claimed that French secret agents had been abducted by jihadists, but insisting that the news be kept secret. The caller then demanded that they pay a ransom of millions of euros into a number bank account in place of France, whose official policy bars payment of such demands. In return, they would be reimbursed through French development aid, the caller claimed. However, nobody was fooled, with all of the officials making contact with Le Drian’s office. There was no information about which African leaders had been targeted.
HONG KONG
Thief substitutes diamond
A thief swapped a US$220,000 diamond with a fake at a luxury jewelry store in Hong Kong, police said yesterday, as the city wrestles with an uptick in shop theft. The diamond, valued at about HK$1.7 million (US$219,310), was taken by a man in his 30s on Friday from a store in Hong Kong’s Central financial district, police said. “From [closed-circuit TV] CCTV footage, it was found that a man posing as a customer arrived at the shop and picked out one of the items and then was suspected to have swapped the diamond with a fake,” a police statement said. The fake diamond was discovered by one of the store’s employees, who reported the case to the police. No arrests have been made.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to