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.”
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