SWITZERLAND
Two small planes crash
A small plane crashed into a forest on Saturday, killing a local family of four who had just taken off for France, police said. In a separate incident, a vintage World War II plane crashed in the country’s southeast later the same day, with up to 20 people feared dead. Local media and aviation Web sites have reported that the plane, which seated 17 passengers along with two pilots and a flight attendant, was fully booked and that no one survived. “The JU-Air team is deeply saddened and is thinking of the passengers, the crew and families and friends of the victims,” JU-Air said on its Web site yesterday. The airline was established in 1982 and offers sightseeing, charter and adventure flights with its three mid-20th century Junkers Ju-52 aircraft.
DR CONGO
Ebola outbreak kills 33
A new outbreak of the Ebola virus is believed to have killed 33 people in the east of the country, the Ministry of Health said on Saturday. Thirteen Ebola cases have been confirmed since the fresh outbreak was declared on Wednesday in North Kivu Province. While just three of the fatalities have been among the 13 confirmed cases, the death toll is believed to have risen to 33, the health authorities said in a bulletin. Containing an Ebola outbreak in a “war zone” in the country is among the most difficult challenges the WHO has faced, a top WHO official said on Friday. In North Kivu, health workers have to navigate their response among more than 100 armed groups, 20 of whom are “highly active,” WHO emergency response chief Peter Salama told reporters.
RUSSIA
Seagal appointed envoy
Moscow has appointed action movie star Steven Seagal as a special envoy for humanitarian ties with the US. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday announced the move on Facebook, saying Seagal’s portfolio in the unpaid position would be to “facilitate relations between Russia and the United States in the humanitarian field, including cooperation in culture, arts, public and youth exchanges.” Seagal is an accomplished martial artist — like President Vladimir Putin. The actor, who was granted Russian citizenship in 2016, has vocally defended Putin’s policies, including the country’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and has criticized the US government.
PHILIPPINES
Moms breastfeed in public
Hundreds of mothers yesterday simultaneously nursed their babies in public, some of them two at a time, in a government-backed mass breastfeeding event aimed at combating child deaths. About 1,500 women, some of them wearing tiaras and superhero T-shirts, sat on the vast floor of a Manila stadium and let their babies suckle to the beat of dance music. The annual event aims to draw public support for a government campaign to get more mothers to switch to breast milk from infant formula, organizer Rose Padua said.
UNITED STATES
Rival groups clash
Small scuffles broke out on Saturday as police in Portland, Oregon, deployed flash-bang grenades and other means to disperse hundreds of right-wing and self-described anti-fascist protesters. Four people were arrested during the protests, the Portland Police Bureau said in a statement. Officers also seized “multiple weapons throughout the day,” police said. A reporter for The Oregonian was bloodied when he was struck by a projectile. Eder Campuzano later tweeted that he was “okay.”
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing