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.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.