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.
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