NIGERIA
Polio cases reported: WHO
The country has reported the first two cases of polio after more than two years, in an area newly liberated from Islamic extremists who attacked polio vaccinators in the past, the government and the WHO said on Thursday. The country’s removal from the WHO’s list of polio-endemic countries in October last year had meant the entire African continent was free of the crippling disease. Two children have been paralyzed by polio in northeastern Borno State in two different local government areas that had been cut off by Boko Haram’s Islamic extremist uprising, Minister of Health Isaac Adewole said in a statement on Thursday night. “Our overriding priority right now is to rapidly boost immunity in the affected areas to ensure that no more children are affected by this terrible disease,” he said. Adewole said he has ordered the deployment of a national emergency response team.
UNITED KINGDOM
London IS schoolgirl dead
One of three schoolgirls who left London in February last year to join the Islamic State (IS) militant group has died, her family lawyer said on Thursday. Attorney Tasnime Akunjee said the family of Kadiza Sultana learned of her death in Raqqa, Syria, a few weeks ago. She was believed to have been killed by a Russian airstrike in Raqqa, ITV News reported earlier on Thursday. Sultana was making plans to return home and her family was communicating with her to discuss her possible escape from Raqqa, according to an interview published by ITV with Sultana’s sister, which includes recordings of purported telephone calls between the sisters. Sultana, 16, along with two other friends, flew from London’s Gatwick Airport to Turkey on Feb. 17 last year.
UNITED STATES
Terrorist ID sparks lawsuit
A Muslim woman is suing the city of Chicago and six officers who falsely singled her out as a potential terrorist on July 4 last year as she left a subway station wearing a headscarf, face veil and carrying a backpack. Itemid al-Matar’s federal lawsuit filed on Thursday says officers pulled off her religious garb, arrested her and later strip-searched her. The 32-year-old was acquitted of obstructing justice. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said “blatant xenophobia, Islamophobia and racial profiling” motivated the arrest. A public police report said officers “were on high alert of terrorist activity” on the national holiday and that al-Matar was exhibiting “suspicious behavior.” The Chicago Police Department declined to comment, but said in a statement that police “strive to treat all individuals with the highest levels of dignity of respect.”
UNITED STATES
Bathroom request denied
A South Texas school board has denied a request from a woman who wants her transgender daughter to use the girls’ restroom. Kim Shappley’s daughter, Kai, is about to be in kindergarten. She was born as Joseph five years ago. The mother says right away she knew Kai had a different identity than “boy.” The Pearland Independent School District board listened to Shappley on Tuesday, but did not alter its policy. In a statement, the district said children are to use the bathroom matching the gender of their birth certificate. It said transgender children in kindergarten can use gender-neutral bathrooms in their classrooms. Shappley on Thursday said that her daughter has lived as a girl for two years. Shappley has not yet picked an elementary school for her daughter.
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