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.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing