UNITED STATES
Canadian PM arrives on visit
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday arrived in Washington for the first state visit by a Canadian leader in 19 years, a diplomatic honor made possible in part by new pledges of cooperation on combating climate change. US President Barack Obama and Trudeau are expected to announce new commitments to reduce planet-warming emissions of methane, a chemical contained in natural gas that is about 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide and can leak from drilling wells and pipelines.
RUSSIA
Bus of journalists attacked
A group of men attacked a small bus carrying foreign and local journalists and activists from a non-governmental organization on Wednesday near the border of Chechnya, beating the occupants and setting the vehicle on fire. The attack took place when assailants in three cars blocked the vehicle, Igor Kalyapin, Committee For Prevention of Torture chairman and Russian Presidential Human Rights Council member said on the council’s Web site. The committee’s regional leader Timur Rakhmatulin told reporters that two of the journalists and the bus driver were hospitalized, but their conditions were not immediately known. Several hours later, committee lawyer Dmitry Utukin said on Twitter that a group of camouflaged armed men attempted to break into the group’s office in the town of Karabulak.
The foreign journalists on the trip included a reporter for Swedish state radio and one from Norway’s Ny Tid newspaper, Rakhmatulin said
FRANCE
Students protest labor plan
Hundreds of thousands of students and workers took to the streets in protest at labor reforms on Wednesday, heaping pressure on President Francois Hollande’s already unpopular and fractured Socialist government. The plan, aimed at boosting hiring, would remove some of the obstacles to laying off workers. Teenagers and students threw eggs and firecrackers as they marched in Paris, directing their anger at French Minister of Labor Myriam El Khomri, whose name is on the draft law.
PERU
Court rejects candidacies
The nation’s highest electoral court on Wednesday rejected the candidacies of the second-place contender and another candidate for next month’s presidential elections a month from the vote. The elections board said the court had barred the candidacies of both centrist Julio Guzman, previously seen as likely to face frontrunner Keiko Fujimori in a runoff, and millionaire former governor Cesar Acuna. The court ruled that Guzman’s party, All for Peru, “seriously and irreparably violated its own rules” in nominating its candidates for the elections, and that Acuna “engaged in prohibited conduct by giving out money” at a rally.
ARGENTINA
Protesters overrun TV station
People exasperated over soaring electricity bills barged into a TV station and attacked a minister who was being interviewed about the increases. Video footage showed Misiones Province Minister of Finance Adolfo Safran answering a question when a group of about 150 protesters barged in shouting “End the robbery.” One protester hit the minister from behind before the TV crew managed to usher him to safety. “Let’s take a commercial break,” presenter Gustavo Anibarro said, as the scene descended into chaos on Tuesday night at Channel 12 in the city of Posadas.
KIRIBATI
New president elected
Taiwan’s diplomatic ally Kiribati has elected a new president, ending the 12-year rule of veteran climate campaigner Anote Tong, his office said yesterday. The low-lying island nation’s new leader is Taneti Maamau, who won a national vote held on Wednesday, the presidential office said. Unconfirmed figures gave Maamau, from the opposition Tobwaan Kiribati Party, 60 percent of the vote in the three-candidate field, with nearest rival Rimeta Beniamina on 38.5 percent and newcomer Tianeti Ioane trailing on 1.5 percent. Maamau’s predecessor Tong had to step down after completing the maximum of three presidential terms.
SOMALIA
Militants killed in joint strike
Hoping to capture a high-profile target, Somalian forces hopped off helicopters close to an al-Shabaab-controlled town, slipped through the dark and got into a fierce firefight that reportedly killed more than 10 Islamic extremists, US and Somalian officials said. US forces were serving in an advisory role and provided the helicopter transportation for the mission, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said. The US forces accompanied the Somalian troops on the mission, but did not “go all the way to the objective,” he said.
AFGHANISTAN
Sentence cut slammed
Human Rights Watch has slammed Afghanistan’s justice system over the case of a woman beaten to death by a frenzied mob last year. Human Rights Watch says the system failed Farkhunda Malikzada when it cut the sentences of the men convicted of her murder. The New York-based group also says it is a “bitter irony” that Afghanistan’s Supreme Court confirmed the reduced sentences on International Women’s Day. Four men had been sentenced to death for their role in the killing of Malikzada, falsely accused of burning a Koran at a Kabul shrine. The Supreme Court upheld sentence reductions to 20 years for three of the men and 10 years for the fourth. Nine other sentences handed down in the case were also reduced.
INDIA
Festival organizer fined
India’s environmental watchdog has fined a group headed by a Hindu spiritual leader 50 million rupees (US$740,000) for building features that altered the topography and flow of the Yamuna River before a cultural festival this weekend. The National Green Tribunal issued the verdict late on Wednesday in response to petitions filed by environmentalists who say the roads, ramps and pontoon bridges could cause irreversible damage to the Yamuna floodplains. The tribunal, however, allowed Art of Living Foundation leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to hold the festival on payment of fine.
INDONESIA
Australia returns migrants
Six Bangladeshi migrants caught entering Australian waters by the country’s border patrol have been sent back to Indonesia on a fishing boat, an Indonesian official said yesterday. The move drew criticism from Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which reiterated its opposition to Australia’s controversial policy and warned such acts could be dangerous at sea. The six men and two Indonesian crew departed the eastern Indonesian city of Kupang last week bound for Australia. Local water police chief Teddy John Sahala Marbun said they reached Australian waters after three days at sea, but ran into engine trouble, and were rescued by Australia’s border patrol as their boat began to sink.
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