IRAQ
Leader Talabani mourned
Iraqi Kurdish officials said Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region has declared a week of mourning after the death of former president Jalal Talabani. Sadi Ahmed Pire, a spokesman for the Kurdish party which Talabani headed, said flags would fly at half-staff yesterday. Talabani’s burial in Sulaimaniyah is planned for this weekend. Seen as a unifying elder statesman who could soothe tempers among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, Talabani suffered a stroke in 2012 after which he was moved to Germany for treatment and faded from political life. He died in a Berlin hospital on Tuesday afternoon at the age of 83, after his condition deteriorated rapidly. His death comes days after Iraqi Kurds’ controversial referendum on independence that has angered Baghdad.
GERMANY
EU to preserve nuclear deal
European countries will do their utmost to preserve a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program despite misgivings by US President Donald Trump, a senior EU diplomat said yesterday. “This is not a bilateral agreement, it’s a multilateral agreement. As Europeans, we will do everything to make sure it stays,” European External Action Service Secretary-General Helga Schmid told an Iranian investment conference of the deal brokered by Iran, the US, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China. Trump is weighing whether the pact serves US security interests as he faces an Oct. 15 deadline for certifying that Iran is complying, a decision that could sink an agreement strongly supported by the other world powers that negotiated it.
MYANMAR
Beauty queen dethroned
A beauty pageant yesterday denied that it dethroned a teen contestant because of a graphic video she posted accusing Rohingya militants of driving communal violence in the west — an issue that has stirred a fierce nationalistic reflex inside the Buddhist-majority country. Shwe Eain Si was stripped of her Miss Grand Myanmar title earlier this week. While pageant organizers said she had breached her contract, she alleged the move was linked to her comments on the humanitarian crisis. In the video, which was interspersed with gruesome photographs of mutilated bodies, Shwe Eain Si expressed a view widely held among the Burmese public that the Rohingya militants have led a “media campaign” to trick the world into thinking “they are the oppressed.”
MONGOLIA
PM named; bailout approved
Parliament yesterday confirmed the nomination of Ukhnaa Khurelsukh as prime minister, putting the country back on track to receive funds from a US$5.5 billion IMF economic rescue package. Khurelsukh, of the ruling Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), received unanimous approval from the lawmakers in attendance for his confirmation as the nation’s 30th prime minister. He will face challenges in bringing back foreign investment to the nation and managing its heavy debt load. The IMF has approved an economic bailout program to help relieve debt pressures and buoy the togrog, that includes austerity policies. An IMF visit to review the program that included the disbursement of US$37.82 million of the funds was delayed last month until a new government was formed. The IMF had said that once a new government was in place, it would engage with the authorities on how best to move forward. Khurelsukh succeeds Jargaltulga Erdenebat, who was voted out of office last month amid allegations of corruption and incompetence.
UNITED STATES
Wisconsin key ad target
Russia-linked Facebook ads during last year’s presidential election mainly focused on the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, CNN reported on Tuesday. The ads targeted key demographic groups and used divisive messages, including promoting anti-Muslim sentiment, the report said, citing sources. Wisconsin and Michigan were among the handful of battleground states that helped US President Donald Trump win the presidency over Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump carried Wisconsin by 22,748 votes and Michigan by 10,700 votes. About 10 million people in the country saw politically divisive ads on Facebook which were purchased in Russia in the months before and after the election, Facebook said on Monday.
UNITED STATES
Man admits sneaking snakes
A man who was caught trying to sneak snakes into Canada in his socks has pleaded guilty. Federal prosecutors in Buffalo said 28-year-old Chaoyi Le faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty on Tuesday to violating wildlife regulations. He was arrested in 2014 at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge in western New York after Canadian border agents discovered three live albino western hognose snakes hidden in his socks. At first, Le said he had found them in a New York park, but eventually admitted buying them. Authorities said Le, a Chinese who lives in Mississauga, Ontario, was trying to avoid a US Fish and Wildlife inspection. Court documents said that on the same day, Le also mailed several snakes from New York to China.
UNITED STATES
Man hallucinates on plane
A Turkish man on Tuesday pleaded guilty to interfering with a flight crew and blamed his inflight behavior that prompted fighter jets to escort the plane to its Honolulu destination on hallucinating that he was chasing a butterfly. A butterfly suddenly came out of the pocket of the seat in front of him, Anil Uskanli said in a Honolulu federal court in describing what he did during the May 19 American Airlines flight from Los Angeles. “The butterfly went crazy ... flew into the toilet,” he said. “I followed it. I tried to kill it by punching it.” Uskanli, 25, said he now realizes that he was ill and hallucinating.
UNITED STATES
O’Neill wins philosophy prize
British philosopher Onora O’Neill has won the US$1 million Berggruen Prize for philosophy and culture. The prize was announced on Tuesday by the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, which called O’Neill “one of the world’s most eminent moral philosophers.” It cited her work on issues such as trust in institutions, bioethics, human rights and international justice. In a video, the 76-year-old Cambridge professor said she is “pleased, astonished and delighted” by the prize.
MEXICO
Workers die in silver mine
Four workers died from poisonous air in a Canadian-owned silver mine in the northern state of Coahuila near the border with Texas, officials said on Tuesday. First Majestic Silver Corp of Vancouver, British Columbia, which owns La Encantada mine about 700km northeast of Torreon in the Muzquiz municipality, said one miner was clearing an area in the mine when he lost consciousness due to “gas intoxication.” The three other miners who died had gone to his aid and were carrying safety belt breathing apparatuses, but did not use them, the statement said.
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