PHILIPPINES
Parties banned on Boracay
There are to be no late-night beach parties or water sports when Boracay Island reopens to tourists today after a six-month shutdown. “Our guests can expect a better Boracay when it comes to maintaining a high environmental standard,” Secretary of Tourism Berna Romulo-Puyat said yesterday via Facebook messenger, adding that visitors should “manage your expectations.” Drinking and smoking in public places have also been banned. Jet skis and other water sports would be banned until further notice, and sand castle making would be regulated, according to a Twitter advisory by Cebu Air. Confirmed bookings with accredited hotels will be required before being allowed entry to the island, officials said. The number of visitors will be capped at 6,405 arrivals per day, while only 19,000 tourists will be allowed on the island at any given time, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Roy Cimatu said.
SINGAPORE
Workers’ Party asks for help
Leaders of the only parliamentary opposition party have appealed to supporters for financial help, saying they face the risk of bankruptcy as costs mount in civil cases they are fighting. Workers’ Party head Pritam Singh, former leader Low Thia Khiang and chair Sylvia Lim are being sued by two town councils controlled by the party between 2011 and 2015 for more than S$30 million (US$21.7 million) in damages. The councils say the trio failed in their fiduciary duties — claims the defendants say are unfounded. The three can lose their parliamentary seats if declared bankrupt, which would cut the Workers’ Party’s seats to six in the 100-seat assembly dominated by the People’s Action Party.
NORTH KOREA
US urged to lift sanctions
A foreign ministry official yesterday urged the US to immediately lift sanctions against his nation, warning that the US’ “confidence-destroying measures” would undermine denuclearization talks. “We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good,” Song Il-hyok, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said at a defense forum in Beijing.
SOUTH KOREA
Disarmament under way
Guards on the two sides of the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the border village of Panmunjom are to begin disarming today, Ministry of National Defense spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said yesterday. The two Koreas and the UN Command are to conduct joint verification until tomorrow. Once demilitarized, the JSA will be guarded by 35 unarmed troops from each side and “freedom of movement” will be allowed for visitors and tourists, according to a pact signed last month.
PAKISTAN
Envoys voice concern
Western nations and Japan have expressed “serious concerns” to Prime Minister Imran Khan about a crackdown on aid groups, diplomats in Islamabad said yesterday. At least 18 international aid agencies were ordered to leave the country in the past few months after being refused registration. The countries have written a letter to Khan saying the groups did not get a proper explanation for why they had been ordered out and they criticized a “lack of transparency” in the registration process. The letter was signed by the EU ambassador and envoys from the US, Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland and Japan.
BRAZIL
Hopeful’s accuser threatened
The nation’s biggest newspaper on Wednesday said that it has asked federal police to investigate threats against a reporter who has said that backers of the presidential frontrunner bankrolled a fake news campaign. The request comes amid an increasingly heated atmosphere ahead of a runoff election on Sunday between Social Liberal Party presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who leads in opinion polls, and his leftist opponent Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad. Newspaper Folha de S Paulo last week ran a report by Patricia Campos Mello saying that businessmen linked to Bolsonaro had paid to spread fake news on WhatsApp to benefit his candidacy. It said that a blast message campaign was also planned for this week.
CHILE
Court advises settling abuse
Santiago Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello and three men who claim that they were sexually abused by Chilean priest Fernando Karadima must appear at a mediation hearing called by the Court of Appeal. In a statement posted on its Web site on Wednesday, the court instructed the two parties to meet with the possibility of an agreement between them. The hearing has been set for Nov. 20. Claimants James Hamilton, Jose Andres Murillo and Juan Carlos Cruz filed an appeal for “moral damages” against the Catholic Church earlier this year, accusing it of covering up abuse crimes. The case was rejected by a lower court for lack of evidence.
CUBA
Minister slams US stance
Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez on Wednesday said that the US was on a path of confrontation amid signs that Washington could further tighten decades-old sanctions on the island. “We regret the US government is advancing on a course of confrontation with Cuba,” Rodriguez told a one-and-a-half-hour news conference in Havana. He also accused the US of pressuring countries to reject a resolution that Cuba is to present at the UN General Assembly next week for the 27th year, calling for an end to the US’ economic embargo on the country. Washington is trying to use human rights as a pretext to justify the embargo, which itself “violates the human rights of the Cuban people,” Rodriguez said.
UNITED STATES
Nationalist leaders charged
The leader of a California-based white nationalist group and three others have been charged with attacking demonstrators and conspiring to incite riots at political rallies across the state, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. Robert Rundo, the 28-year-old founder of the Rise Above Movement, was on Sunday taken into custody at Los Angeles International Airport. Two other members of the group, Robert Boman, 25, and Tyler Laube, 22, were arrested on Wednesday morning, US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles spokesman Thom Mrozek said.
FRANCE
Dad of underfed boys jailed
The father of two boys, aged three and four, was on Wednesday jailed in Limoges for three months for feeding them nearly exclusively on Coca-Cola, the children’s lawyer said. The father, who can “neither read, nor write, nor count, doesn’t realize the seriousness of the situation and spent all his welfare money on alcohol,” Carole Papon, a representative of the association French Victims 87, said on Wednesday. Within a few days of welfare payments being made “the family had nothing to eat. They only had Coca-Cola to drink,” she said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
CARTEL ARRESTS: The president said that a US government operation to arrest two cartel members made it jointly responsible for the unrest in the state’s capital Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday blamed the US in part for a surge in cartel violence in the northern state of Sinaloa that has left at least 30 people dead in the past week. Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power after two of its leaders were arrested in the US in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces. Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to be found across the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove