SPAIN
Strike disrupts train services
More than 300 trains were canceled yesterday as workers went on strike to defend women’s rights on International Women’s Day, the Ministry of Public Works and Transport said. About 200 intercity trains out of 568 were not operating, while 105 long-distance trains were canceled, it said. The underground in Madrid was also affected. The 24-hour strike was called by 10 unions. Feminist groups have also asked women not to spend money and to ditch their domestic chores for the day. The strike has been the subject of much debate over the past weeks and many famous women have thrown their weight behind the stoppage. Actress Penelope Cruz canceled events and was on “domestic” strike, leaving her partner, Javier Bardem, to care for their two children.
SPAIN
Farmers protest in capital
Thousands of farmers from the parched southeast on Wednesday marched in Madrid to ask the government for help as their crops are threatened by a “surreal” drought that is also putting jobs at risk. The region that goes from the cities of Alicante to Almeria has been hit hard by the worst drought in decades. According to the latest official data, the Jucar and Segura rivers that flow into the east and southeast are at 27.7 percent and 17.6 percent of capacity respectively. “They’ve cut 80 percent of our water supply,” said Jose Antonio Diaz Navarro, 38, manager of a company that grows lettuce and watermelons in Almeria Province and neighboring Murcia. He said that as a result, his firm has only been able to grow 15 to 20 percent of what it would normally. It has become so desperate for some farmers they are considering relocating at least part of their crop to the Montpellier region in southern France, he said.
NIGERIA
Twenty-four killed in clashes
More than 20 people have died in clashes between herders and farmers, police said, part of an outbreak of violence that has piled pressure on President Muhammadu Buhari less than a year before elections. Two herders went missing in the central state of Benue on Monday and one was later found dead, a police spokesman said. In revenge, a group armed with machetes attacked people, including women and children, in the district of Okpokwu the same day, the spokesman said. Twenty-four people died in the violence, he added. “Four suspects have so far been arrested in connection with the gruesome murder,” the spokesman said. The herders are mostly Muslims from Buhari’s Fulani ethnic group, while the majority of farmers are Christians.
INDONESIA
Smoking ape sparks furor
A video of an orangutan smoking has brought more criticism of a zoo infamous for past animal welfare troubles. In the video shot on Sunday, a young man flicks his half-smoked cigarette into the primate’s enclosure. It is picked up by the primate, who expertly puffs on it to laughter from the crowd. Activist Marison Guciano on Wednesday said that the smoking ape is further evidence of a lack of supervision and education at Bandung Zoo, about 120km southwest of the capital, Jakarta. Guciano said the man committed a crime, but the zoo is mainly responsible because of its “ignorance of supervision and education for visitors.” The zoo has repeatedly made headlines for starving and sick animals. It was temporarily closed in 2016 after a Sumatran elephant that died was found to have bruises on its body. “We very much regret that such a thing happened,” zoo spokesman Sulhan Syafi’I said.
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
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.