GERMANY
Doctors ‘abetting’ migrants
Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere told a newspaper that doctors were handing out too many certificates to migrants who face deportation, saying they were too ill to travel. More than 1 million migrants arrived in the country last year, a record influx that has boosted support for anti-
immigrant groups and raised concerns about security. New arrivals have slowed this year. “Doctors are still issuing too many certificates where there is no real health reason not to deport someone,” De Maiziere told regional newspaper Rheinische Post’s in yesterday’s edition. “It can’t be true that 70 percent of men under the age of 40 are declared sick and not fit to travel before deportation. Experience suggests this is not the case.”
CHINA
Three detained over air rage
Police have detained a man over an attack on an airline check-in clerk that left her lying in a pool of blood and arrested two others who charged the cockpit as their flight was taxiing for takeoff. A statement from the Civil Aviation Administration said two men aboard a Hainan Airlines flight on Sunday demanded to be upgraded to business class as their flight was taxiing. When told to remain seated, they fought with a member of the cabin crew and a passenger who tried to help, then pounded on the cockpit door. They continued to kick and punch after police boarded the flight and had to be removed in handcuffs, the agency said. They are facing criminal charges for obstruction, it said. Another passenger was ordered detained for 10 days, fined and told to pay compensation to the clerk whom he smashed across the head with a brass plaque. Online photos showed the woman lying on the floor behind the counter, blood from the head wound pooling beneath her.
UNITED KINGDOM
No charges for Cliff Richard
Singer Cliff Richard, one of the nation’s best-known entertainers, will not face criminal charges over alleged historical sex crimes because there is insufficient evidence, prosecutors said yesterday. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was handed a file of evidence by police last month relating to allegations against Richard, 75. “The CPS has carefully reviewed evidence relating to claims of non-recent sexual offences dating between 1958 and 1983 made by four men,” said Martin Goldman, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Yorkshire and Humberside. “We have decided that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute.” Richard, who always denied any wrongdoing, has never been arrested, but twice voluntarily met officers from South Yorkshire Police after it launched an inquiry in 2014. Richard, born Harry Webb in 1940, has had 14 No. 1 singles in Britain.
UNITED STATES
Anti-Trump playbook hacked
The Web site Gawker on Wednesday published what it said appears to be the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) anti-Donald Trump playbook, which was accessed by hackers in a data breach. The 200-plus-page document is largely a compilation of Trump’s past statements and aims to paint the presumptive GOP nominee as a divisive liar and bad businessman, who is loyal only to himself. Sophisticated hackers linked to Russian intelligence services broke into the DNC’s computer networks and gained access to confidential e-mails, chats and opposition research on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, people familiar with the breach said on Tuesday. The DNC would not confirm that it had produced the document posted by Gawker.
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