HAITI
New poll to cost US$55m
The government on Wednesday said that it would spend US$55 million on a new election after the results of the last vote were scrapped, with most of the money to be drawn from the nation’s own coffers as foreign donors are reluctant to pay again. The US, which contributed US$33 million to the last election, strongly opposed aborting the results and last month said that no aid would be forthcoming for the repeat. Washington also asked the government to return nearly US$2 million. The electoral council said the new budget would cover a period from June this year to March next year, by which time both rounds of the presidential vote are due to be completed.
GERMANY
Merkel defends refugees
Chancellor Angela Merkel has dismissed suggestions that the influx of refugees over the past year has brought Islamic extremism to the nation. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Wednesday quoted Merkel saying that “Islamist terrorism by IS [the Islamic State group] is not a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees, it is one that we had before too.” Meanwhile, a man arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of storing materials that could be used as explosives had items in his apartment glorifying the IS group, Brandenburg state police president Hans-Juergen Moerke told Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting. He said that no attack plans had been found, but a search of the apartment had uncovered pyrotechnics, a gas mask, a replica Kalashnikov, camouflage suits and “many other … things that glorify IS.”
BOLIVA
Military academy opened
President Evo Morales has opened a new “anti-imperialist” military academy to counter US policies and military influence in Latin America. “If the empire teaches domination of the world from its military schools, we will learn from this school to free ourselves from imperial oppression,” he said on Wednesday at the inauguration ceremony. “We want to build anti-colonial and anti-capitalist thinking with this school that binds the armed forces to social movements and counteracts the influence of the School of the Americas that always saw the indigenous as internal enemies.”
FRANCE
Train hits fallen tree
Eight people were seriously hurt in the south of the country on Wednesday when an express train crashed into a fallen tree uprooted by a massive hailstorm, rescue workers said. The impact sparked panic, as some passengers feared a militant attack was underway, according to one witness. The regional express was carrying 219 passengers on a service between Nimes and Montpellier when it hit the tree at 140kph, the state rail operator SNCF said. The accident occurred near the town of Lunel, about 28km southwest of Nimes.
MOLDOVA
Diplomats summoned
The foreign ministry has summoned Russian diplomats to protest recent military exercises involving Russian troops in a separatist region of the country. The ministry called the exercises illegal in a statement released yesterday, adding that they were “provocative and inadmissible ... and undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the nation. Diplomats were called to the ministry late on Wednesday after Moldovan separatists and Russian troops staged joint military exercises this week in the breakaway republic of Trans-Dniester.
VIETNAM
Party officials murdered
Two senior Communist Party officials were shot dead by a colleague at their offices in Yen Bai Province, state media reported yesterday, a rare high profile gun homicide in the country. The province’s most senior official, party chief Pham Duy Cuong and head of the provincial people’s council, Ngo Ngoc Tuan, were gunned down by a senior forest ranger, Do Cuong Minh, Tuoi Tre newspaper said. They were shot multiple times and were pronounced dead after they reached hospital, the paper said. The official Vietnam News Agency said the shooter committed suicide with his own gun. No reason has yet been given for the slayings.
VIETNAM
Commemoration ban lifted
Under pressure from top Australian officials, the government yesterday lifted its sudden ban on Australian veterans who had traveled to the country to mark the 50th anniversary of their nation’s most costly battle of the Vietnam War, with Hanoi allowing low-key commemorations. More than 1,000 Australian veterans and their families had come to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan at a cross marking the site where 18 Australian soldiers and hundreds of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops died in a rubber plantation on Aug. 18, 1966. Hanoi, late on Tuesday, told Australia the event was canceled. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade yesterday said in a statement that small groups of people would be allowed into the site, but visitors were banned from wearing medals or uniforms and from carrying banners or flags. The Long Tan anniversary is Australia’s official Vietnam Veterans Day and has been commemorated by Australians at the battle scene since 1989.
PHILIPPINES
Second hostage escapes
A second Indonesian sailor escaped from Abu Sayyaf militants in the south on the same day his colleague swam to freedom after almost two months in captivity, officials said yesterday. Ismail, the chief officer of a tugboat whose seven crewmen were abducted near Philippine waters in June, was found by troops on Wednesday along a road in southern Jolo Island’s Luuk town, said Major Filemon Tan, a regional military spokesman. “Troops were scouring the area looking for other Indonesian hostages when they found Ismail, who identified himself to the military as a kidnap victim,” Tan said. Tan said Ismail and the sailor who swam to freedom on Wednesday had escaped together, but fled in separate ways as their captors chased them.
NEW ZEALAND
Water probe launched
The government yesterday launched an inquiry into the contamination of a regional water supply that has left thousands of people sick with vomiting and diarrhea. The outbreak of Campylobacter bacteria, a form of gastroenteritis, has affected about 3,000 people, about half of who are in the town of Havelock North on North Island, officials said.
CHINA
Admiral visits Damascus
A top military officer visited Syria this week in a show of support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Rear Admiral Guan Youfei (關友飛) met on Monday with Syrian Minister of Defense Fahd Jassem al-Freij in Damascus, Xinhua news agency said. He also met with a Russian general who is coordinating Moscow’s military assistance to al-Assad’s fight against armed opposition groups. Xinhua said Guan expressed China’s willingness to boost military cooperation.
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