TURKEY
Helicopter crash kills 13
A military helicopter crashed on Wednesday near the border with Iraq, killing all 13 personnel on board, the military said. The crash occurred in the border province of Sirnak, where government troops are engaged in operations against Kurdish militants. A military statement said the crash appeared to be accidental, with initial information indicating that helicopter had hit a high-voltage transmission line shortly after taking off from a base in Sirnak’s Senoba region. The private DHA news agency said a delegation led by a major-general was on board.
BANGLADESH
Navy rescues fishermen
The navy yesterday said that it has rescued 23 fishermen from the Bay of Bengal and is searching for scores more missing since Cyclone Mora hit two days ago. Most of those rescued were plucked from a sinking boat which had broken down, stranding them at sea. “At least 15 ships have been deployed to search for survivors in the Bay of Bengal after the storm,” a senior navy official said. Mushtaq Ahmed, a local fishing industry representative, said that eight boats carrying about 150 fishermen have so far failed to return.
ISRAEL
Palestinian stabs soldier
A Palestinian woman was shot and critically wounded yesterday after stabbing a soldier outside a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, the army and medics said. The soldier was taken to hospital with a stab wound to his upper body, medics from Magen David Adom emergency service said. The attack took place at the entrance to Mevo Dotan, a Jewish settlement southwest of Jenin.
UGANDA
Chinese envoys investigated
President Yoweri Museveni has ordered an investigation into possible collusion between the Ugandan Wildlife Authority (UWA) and two Chinese diplomats in the trafficking of ivory. The Chinese embassy officials are suspected of colluding in the movement of ivory from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, a government official said. Ali Munira, spokeswoman for the Inspectorate General of Government ombudsman, did not name the Chinese diplomats, but said the UWA was under suspicion. Museveni has also ordered a new probe into the theft of ivory worth more than US$1 million in November 2014.
JAPAN
Satellite launched
A rocket carrying a satellite with a local version of the US global positioning system (GPS) was launched yesterday, part of a government bid to increase the precision of location information used in smartphones and car navigation systems. The rocket that carried the satellite called “Michibiki No. 2” was launched from Tanegashima.
SOUTH AFRICA
Warning over pangolins
A conservation group said the seizure of 6.35 tonnes of pangolin scales in Hong Kong this week indicates that the heavily poached creature “could soon vanish for good” if urgent steps are not taken to protect it. The International Fund for Animal Welfare on Wednesday said that the size of the seized shipment from Nigeria was 10 times bigger than a confiscation of pangolin scales in Malaysia three weeks earlier. The fund wants China and other countries to take steps to curb the demand for pangolins, whose scales are used in traditional medicine in parts of Asia.
UNITED KINGDOM
Arrested man released
Manchester police on Wednesday released without charge one of the men arrested in connection with the terrorist attack on Monday last week at a pop concert in the city. Ten men remained in custody following the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena, where US singer Ariana Grande was performing. Twenty-two people, including seven children, were killed in the attack. The 21-year-old man released had been arrested on Wednesday last week in the town of Nuneaton in central England, more than 180km from Manchester. “As it stands 16 people in total have been arrested in connection with the investigation, of which six people have since been released without charge,” police said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Jerry Garcia guitar sold
A guitar that Jerry Garcia played everywhere from San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom to Egypt’s Great Pyramids fetched more than US$1.9 million at an auction on Wednesday. The Grateful Dead frontman’s guitar — named Wolf — was sold at the Brooklyn Bowl, a bowling alley, restaurant and music venue. The proceeds are earmarked for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The guitar was owned by devoted Deadhead Daniel Pritzker, a philanthropist, musician and film director who bought the instrument in 2002 for US$790,000. “I’ve been a fan of The Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege, but the time is right for Wolf to do some good,” Pritzker said.
FRANCE
Property deal probed
Prosecutors yesterday said that they were opening a preliminary investigation into a property deal involving one of President Emmanuel Macron’s ministers. Macron on Wednesday defended Richard Ferrand, a close ally of the president, over allegations that Ferrand favored his wife in a lucrative deal with a public health insurance fund when he headed the company. The timing of the announcement by prosecutors in the western port of Brest is embarrassing for Macron because the government was to unveil a draft law on cleaning up politics. The pledge to rejuvenate the corruption-plagued political class was one of the central planks of the campaign that swept 39-year-old Macron to the presidency on May 7. Ferrand, one of Macron’s first prominent backers and formerly secretary general of the president’s Republique En Marche party, has denied any wrongdoing. He told France Inter radio: “I am an honest man.” The Canard Enchaine investigative newspaper reported last week that an insurance fund that Ferrand headed in his native Brittany — where he is a lawmaker — agreed in 2011 to rent a building from his wife and carry out renovations that boosted its value. Ferrand, 54-year-old minister for territorial cohesion, has dismissed the report as a “welcome present” from the media for the new government. He says his wife made the fund the best offer and that he had no say in the matter.
MEXICO
Gillnet ban extended
The Agriculture and Fisheries Department said it is extending a ban on gillnets in much of the upper Gulf of California as part of an effort to save the endangered vaquita porpoise. A statement on Wednesday by the department said it would continue to provide monetary and other support for fishermen affected by the measure.
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