AUSTRIA
Dozens injured in train crash
Two passenger trains were early on Friday involved in a crash while being coupled together at the main station in Salzburg, in which up to 40 people were slightly injured, police said. One train slammed too hard into another from Zurich, Switzerland, as they were being coupled together, a police spokesman said. “A Nightjet [train] was stopped at platform four and in a coupling procedure another train drove into it from behind,” the spokesman said, adding that the number of injuries was not expected to rise significantly. The accident happened at about 4:45am, the spokesman said.
NICARAGUA
Two killed as protests grow
A protester and a policeman were killed in the capital, Managua, after demonstrations over pension reform turned violent on Thursday night, officials said, and the government has ordered off the air five independent TV channels that have been covering the unrest. The deaths came after protests by both opponents and supporters of a new law, which increases employer and employee contributions while reducing the overall amount of pensions by 5 percent, rocked the capital for a second day. A 33-year-old policeman was shot dead, police said, as well as a young male protester. A male student was also killed, opposition demonstrators said. At the National Agrarian University, a protester lost an eye during clashes with riot police who arrived to quell the demonstration. Several people were seen being detained in video images transmitted by media not controlled by the government, although police have not given official figures on arrests. On Thursday, the government ordered cable companies to cut the signal of the channels.
ESWATINI
King Mswati renames nation
King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch, on Thursday said he was officially renaming the country as the Kingdom of Eswatini. He announced the change at celebrations of the 50th anniversary of independence and of his 50th birthday. The king has referred to the “Kingdom of Eswatini” several times over the past few years — in an address to the UN General Assembly last year and at other international conferences. Addressing a large gathering in Manzini, the king said the country was reverting to the original name it had before being colonized by the British. “I would like to announce that from today onwards, our country will be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini,” Mswati said. He said the name “Swaziland” had caused confusion. “Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland,” the king said, adding that he wanted his country to have a name people could identify with. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) attended the event while on a visit to the country, one of Taiwan’s two African diplomatic allies.
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