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.
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