AUSTRALIA
Anti-Trump motion passed
The New South Wales Legislative Council, the upper house of the state’s parliament, yesterday unanimously passed a motion that described US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as “a revolting slug unfit for public office.” “This house ... agrees with those who have described Mr Trump as a ‘revolting slug’ unfit for public office,” the motion said. The house “condemns the misogynist, hateful comments” made by him about women and minorities, and those “that clearly describe sexual assault,” the motion said. No one objected to the motion, so it was recorded as having been unanimously agreed to by the Sydney-based house. Greens party lawmaker Jeremy Buckingham introduced the motion.
MYANMAR
Crackdown kills 26
Security forces have now killed at least 26 people in response to attacks on police that have sparked a dramatic escalation in violence in a Muslim-majority region along the border with Bangladesh, state media reports said. Military personnel and police reinforcements have poured into Maungdaw, Rakhine State, and have clashed with groups of up to 300 men, armed with pistols, swords and knives, the reports said. Human rights groups and advocates for the stateless Rohingya have voiced concern that the civilian population may be caught up in the authorities’ violent response. The killings bring the total death toll in northern Rakhine State since Sunday to 39, including 13 security personnel. The 26 alleged attackers reported killed include several who a local resident told reporters were shot while unarmed and fleeing soldiers.
BURUNDI
Vote to quit ICC passed
Lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted in support of a plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), something no nation has ever done. The decision escalates a bitter dispute with the international community over the human rights situation in the nation, which has seen more than a year of deadly violence after President Pierre Nkurunziza made a controversial decision to pursue a third term. Ninety-four out of 110 lawmakers voted in favor of the withdrawal plan. The decision, which was also unanimously adopted by the Senate, now needs the president’s approval.
PHILIPPINES
Death toll revised
Police have said nearly 2,300 people have died in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs since July, down from an earlier estimate of 3,600, after investigations into the near-daily killings. “Not all [the deaths] are related to the war on drugs,” National Police spokesman Dionardo Carlos said late on Wednesday. He said that 1,566 drug suspects were killed in police operations and 722 deaths were still under investigation or had already been investigated.
CHINA
Trapped elephants rescued
Rescuers in Yunnan Province used a large excavator to break down a concrete wall and free three elephants stuck in a reservoir for more than two days, state media reported. The two adult elephants and calf were discovered on Sunday in the 5m deep reservoir by forest rangers, but heavy rains filled up the pool and delayed rescue efforts. The two adult elephants helped the calf keep afloat as the water levels rose, while rescuers provided the trio with food. Authorities believe the calf fell in to the reservoir and the two adults went in to help.
ITALY
Playwright Dario Fo dies
Nobel prize-winning playwright, director and political activist Dario Fo, an acclaimed satirist who poked a finger in the eye of the church and state, has died aged 90, officials said yesterday. Famous for his cutting political satire in plays such as The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Fo won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. He remained a committed activist to the end, skewering the nation’s authorities with his sharp wit. He was admitted to hospital in Milan 12 days ago. “With Dario Fo, Italy loses one of the great protagonists of theater, culture and the civic life of our country,” said Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was himself regularly ridiculed by the irreverent Fo.
UNITED STATES
Turkey frees US journalist
Turkish authorities have released US journalist Lindsey Snell detained for the past two months after she fled Syria claiming to have been kidnapped by militants, a senior US official said yesterday. Snell is returning to the US, the official said. She was arrested on Aug. 6 for “violating a military zone” after she returned from Syria, where she said she had been filming civilians affected by airstrikes. The Committee to Protect Journalists media freedom watchdog welcomed Snell’s release. On her return flight to New York on Wednesday, Snell said she was concerned about her husband Suliman Wardak, who was also arrested in Turkey after traveling there to help with her case, the Guardian reported.
ITALY
Human traffickers jailed
A judge sentenced three men to 20 years each in jail on Wednesday for their role in packing hundreds of refugees into a boat in which 49 suffocated in the Mediterranean in August last year, a legal source said. The judge in Catania, Sicily, found the three guilty of murder and facilitating illegal immigration, more than a year after rescuers recovered the victims from the hold of a fishing boat from which they also pulled 312 survivors.
ECUADOR
Assange rape case delayed
The government has delayed until Nov. 14 its questioning of Julian Assange in a Swedish rape investigation, at the Wikileaks founder’s request, the prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday. The questioning, originally scheduled for Monday, could help end a four-year-long deadlock since Assange took refuge in the nation’s London embassy. “He made the request in a document, via the Ecuadoran ambassador in the UK, in which he sets out his reasons pertaining to protection guarantees and self-defense,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a police investigator will be allowed to be present to ask questions through the Ecuadoran prosecutor, who will later report the findings to Sweden, the European country’s prosecutors have previously said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Firm fined over Ford’s leg
A film production company was fined £1.6 million (US$1.95 million) on Wednesday over an accident on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that broke the leg of movie star Harrison Ford. The actor was struck by a hydraulic door on the set of the Millennium Falcon at Pinewood Studios near London in June 2014. Prosecutors said Ford, who was 71 at the time, could have been killed by the door, which struck him with a force comparable to the weight of a small car.
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