RUSSIA
US withdrawal supported
A top diplomat on Thursday met with Taliban representatives and expressed Moscow’s support for the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. The meeting came after two days of talks between prominent Afghan figures and Taliban representatives in Moscow. A senior Taliban official on Wednesday said that the US has proposed to withdraw half of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of April, but the US military said it has received no such orders. President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov told RIA Novosti news agency that Russia is willing to help talks between the US and the Taliban, “but if the US says that they want to withdraw their troops, but leave some military bases there — we’re not going to be helping on this.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Ex-Moldovian PM’s son fined
A son of former Moldovian prime minister Vlad Filat, who drove a Bentley and paid £1,000-a-day (US$1,295) rent, was on Thursday ordered to hand over nearly £500,000, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said. NCA investigators found that Filat’s 22-year-old son Luca Filat had obtained his wealth “from illegal activity by his father.” In 2015, Vlad Filat was stripped of his immunity and handcuffed in Moldova’s parliament after he allegedly accepted US$260 million in bribes. Vlad Filat was then jailed for nine years for his role in the disappearance of US$1.0 billion. Filat’s son came under scrutiny because he splashed around cash while having “no registered income in the UK,” the NCA said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Booze order irrelevant: study
Under carefully controlled lab conditions, British and German researchers plied 90 volunteers with beer and wine to find out once and for all whether hangovers are worsened by the order in which drinks are necked. “Everyone knows the saying, ‘beer before wine and you’ll feel fine; wine before beer and you’ll feel queer,’” said Kai Hensel, a senior clinical fellow at Cambridge University. “We debunked the saying, it’s not true. You’re going to be the same whatever order you drink these beverages in,” Hensel said. The study only compared beer with white wine.
UNITED STATES
US representative dies
Former representative John Dingell, the longest-serving member of the Congress in American history and a master of legislative deal-making who was fiercely protective of Detroit’s auto industry, has died. The Michigan Democrat was 92. Dingell, who served in the House of Representatives for 59 years before retiring in 2014, died on Thursday at his home in Dearborn. Dingell served with every president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama.
NEW ZEALAND
Evacuations due to forest fire
About 700 residents were yesterday evacuated from a town as a forest fire threatened the area. Civil defense authorities decided to evacuate parts of Wakefield on South Island. The wildfire began on Tuesday and had spread to about 2,000 hectares by yesterday. It had burned down one house. Richard Kirby, the group recovery manager for the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, said that it might be four of five days before the fire is contained.
AUSTRALIA
Security breach at parliament
Parliament yesterday revealed that its computer network had been compromised by an unspecified “security incident” and said that an investigation was under way. “Following a security incident on the parliamentary computing network, a number of measures have been implemented to protect the network and its users,” parliamentary authorities said in a statement. Officials declined to comment on the nature of the cybersecurity breach, but said that there was no initial evidence that data had been accessed. “We have no evidence that this is an attempt to influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes,” a statement said. “Our immediate focus has been on securing the network and protecting data and users.”
SOUTH AFRICA
President calls elections
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday announced that general elections would be held on May 8 as the ruling African National Congress looks to reverse falling popularity due to weak growth, unemployment and corruption. Ramaphosa sought to strike an optimistic tone and said that South Africans are “much more hopeful” since he took over one year ago from Jacob Zuma.
SYRIA
IS leader survives coup
Islamic State (IS) group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi last month survived a coup attempt launched by foreign fighters in his eastern Syrian hideout and the terrorist group has since placed a bounty on the main plotter’s head, intelligence officials said. The incident is believed to have taken place on Jan. 10 in a village near Hajin in the Euphrates River valley, where the militant group is clinging to its last sliver of land. Regional intelligence officials said that a planned move against al-Baghdadi led to a firefight between foreign fighters and al-Baghdadi’s bodyguards, who spirited him away to the nearby deserts. The IS has offered a reward to whoever kills Abu Muath al-Jazairi, believed to be a veteran foreign fighter, one of an estimated 500 IS fighters thought to remain in the area. While IS did not directly accuse al-Jazairi, placing a bounty on the head of one of its senior members is an unusual move and intelligence officials said they believe he was the central plotter.
TURKEY
At least 10 dead in collapse
The death toll from the collapse of an Istanbul apartment block on Thursday rose to 10 as more bodies were pulled from the rubble, authorities said. The eight-story building in the city’s Kartal District collapsed on Wednesday, but the cause is not yet clear. Rescuers initially put the death toll at two, but Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya said that the figure had leapt to 10 as more bodies were pulled from the rubble, Anadolu news agency reported. Another 13 people were injured, three of them seriously, he said. Forty-three people were registered in the building, Anadolu said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was