UNITED KINGDOM
Islamic State issues threat
The Islamic State group on Sunday threatened Britain in an online video showing the killing of five “spies” it said worked with the international coalition fighting the extremist group in Iraq and Syria. The SITE Intelligence Group said the video shows five men from Raqa, capital of the self-declared Muslim “caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq, confessing to carrying out acts of espionage. In the footage, an English-speaking extremist mocks Prime Minister David Cameron for challenging the Islamic State, and calls him an “imbecile.” The “confessions” of the five do not clearly identify which countries they worked with.
YEMEN
Aden leaders impose curfew
Authorities in Aden yesterday imposed a curfew after violence blamed on suspected extremists killed at least 17 people, pro-government media and security sources said. The curfew is to come into force at 8pm and last until 5am, the sabanews.net Web site said, citing a decision taken by the Aden Security Commission. The decision comes after fierce battles on Sunday in the port of Aden that killed 17 people, among them nine members of the security forces, including a colonel, the security sources said.
POLAND
Government defends law
The government on Sunday defended its new media law as fair, voicing surprise at the EU’s negative reaction to the legislation. Last week, lawmakers approved legislation by the new ruling party that ends the terms of the current heads of state-run radio and TV, who were appointed by the previous establishment. The new law also gives the government the authority to make new appointments. President Andrzej Duda is expected to sign it into law soon, as the ruling conservative and EU-skeptic Law and Justice party is rushing to make major state and social reforms it promised in the presidential and parliamentary campaigns last year.
ITALY
Rain brings guano deluge
Weekend rain washed away the dangerous pollution that has afflicted Rome in recent weeks, but left city authorities with a new headache: roads and sidewalks made treacherous by bird droppings. The downpours that cleaned up the air and brought levels of fine particles back down below a WHO-recommended threshold also cleansed the city’s trees of several weeks’ worth of guano deposited by millions of migratory starlings. The result, in combination with rotting leaves, was a slippery, slimy fungal mush that forced city authorities to close roads on the banks of the Tiber for most of Saturday while workers attempted to hose the streets back into a safe state.
UNITED STATES
Selfie lands robber in jail
Police in northern California say they have arrested a man accused of armed robbery thanks to a Snapchat selfie he took with one of the victims. KNTV reports that Pacific Grove police arrested 18-year-old Victor Almanza-Martinez, of Castroville, who is believed to have participated in an armed robbery. Police said that Almanza-Martinez and two others approached four victims on Wednesday last week at Lover Point Park and allegedly robbed them of their belongings, including a car. The suspects fled in the stolen car, which is still missing, but before leaving Almanza-Martinez and a female victim exchanged Snapchat information and posed for a selfie together. Police said the selfie helped them track down Almanza-Martinez.
JAPAN
Abe foresees challenges
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday told a nationally televised news conference that the coming year is likely to bring “challenges, challenges and still more challenges.” He said he expects to make progress on sweeping reforms he has promised, likening himself to the 18th-century “Abarenbo Shogun,” or “Rogue general” Tokugawa Yoshimune, a national leader renowned for his efforts to reduce waste, clean up corruption and instill samurai values of discipline and leadership. Abe also said that he hoped for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a dispute over northern islands that has blocked the two nations from signing a peace treaty since the end of World War II. Meanwhile, local political superstition holds that every nine years a setback in elections for the Diet’s upper house forces the prime minister to step down. “Observers will be watching closely to see whether he is able to break the jinx,” the Jiji news agency said in a commentary.
SRI LANKA
TNA hails land offer
The main opposition Tamil National Alliance (TNA) yesterday welcomed President Maithripala Sirisena’s promise of land for 100,000 people who were forced from their homes during the long civil war, most of them Tamils. It said Sirisena’s pledge to give displaced civilians new plots within six months was a “positive development,” but demanded that the military vacate the private land it occupied. “This is the first time he is giving a timeframe,” TNA spokesman M.A. Sumanthiran said, one day after Sirisena made the offer. More than 100,000 people are still living away from their homes more than six years after the end of the war, Sumanthiran said, while another 168,000 live as refugees in India.
KYRGYZSTAN
Briton held over penis post
A Briton working at a Canadian-owned gold mine could face up to five years in jail for comparing a local delicacy to a horse penis, officials said on Sunday. Michael Mcfeat, an employee of Toronto-based Centerra Gold, was detained by police after posting a comment on Facebook that caused a temporary strike at the Kumtor mine, a Ministry of the Interior spokesman said. In the offending post, Mcfeat said his colleagues were lining up for their “special delicacy, the horse’s penis” during holiday celebrations in reference to a traditional horse sausage known as chuchuk. Mcfeat has deleted his remarks and posted an apology on Facebook, saying he had not meant to offend anyone.
PHILIPPINES
Protest to Beijing likely
The government yesterday said that, like Vietnam, it opposes China’s recent test of a newly completed runway on one of seven islands Beijing has constructed in the South China Sea. Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said the government was considering protesting China’s action, as Vietnam did, adding that the test at the Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Reef, 永暑礁) “adds to tension and uncertainties in the region.”
CHINA
‘Feudal’ beliefs targeted
The Chinese Communist Party has tightened its ban on members believing in “feudal superstitions,” Xinhua news agency said on Sunday, as part of new regulations on discipline. The new rules, which took effect on Friday last week, threaten members who “organize” superstitious activities such as reliance on fortune telling and feng shui with expulsion, while those who merely participate in them face warnings.
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