ALBANIA
Ex-minister arrested: police
Police said former minister of labor, social affairs and equal opportunities Spiro Ksera has been arrested on charges of abuse of power. Police on Friday said that 48-year-old Ksera is accused of issuing a 30 million lek (then US$285,000) tender for activities that never took place. At the time, Ksera was minister of labor, social affairs and equal opportunities in the Cabinet of then-prime minister Sali Berisha. He left the post in 2013. The arrest comes as the country hopes to launch full membership talks soon with the EU. The EU has asked the government to step up its fight against corruption.
CANADA
Avalanche kills five: officials
Five snowmobilers were killed on Friday after being buried in an avalanche in British Columbia, officials said. The deaths were confirmed by the British Columbia Coroners Service, which said the accident occurred on Friday afternoon in the western hamlet of McBride, about 800km northeast of Vancouver. Officials told reporters that six other people trapped by the avalanche were rescued alive. Rescuers said the snowmobilers had strayed to a part of the area that was off-limits to skiers and other winter sport enthusiasts. British Columbia Coroners Service spokeswoman Barbara McLintock said the site of the disaster “is not a resort” area. Avalanche Canada said the disaster was likely caused by human activity. The non-profit group said the area had just received about 30cm of fresh snow and conditions in the region were windy, which, combined with recent mild temperatures, created an unstable snowpack.
EUROPEAN UNION
Rocket starts building EDRS
A Russian Proton rocket on Friday night blasted off from Kazakhstan to put into orbit both the first part of Europe’s new space “data highway” and a Eutelsat communications satellite. The 19-story-tall Russian-built rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4:20am. The rocket was carrying the first building block of the European Data Relay System (EDRS), a “big data” highway costing nearly 500 million euros (US$541.5 million) that is to harness new laser-based communications technology.
RUSSIA
Earthquake strikes Far East
A powerful magnitude 7 earthquake yesterday morning struck in the Russian Far East, US and Russian authorities said, although there were no reports of any casualties. The US Geological Survey said the earthquake occurred at 3:25am GMT at a depth of 160km, in the mountainous Kamchatka Krai region on the eastern coast. The local branch of the Ministry of Emergency Situations said the origin of the earthquake was located northwest of regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. “The epicenter was in the region of Yelizovo, 84km northwest of Yelizovo and 87km northwest of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky,” the ministry said in a statement. “Inhabitants of populated areas felt the tremor at magnitude of 5.0,” it said, adding: “Preliminary information indicates the earthquake caused no damage or casualties.” The Russian Academy of Sciences said on its Web site the first tremor was followed minutes later by a magnitude 5.2 aftershock. The earthquake struck in an area close to the “Ring of Fire,” an arc of fault lines that circle the Pacific Ocean that is prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The US’ National and Pacific tsunami warning centers said there was no risk of a tsunami.
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
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