SUDAN
Opposition leader jailed
An emergency court on Sunday sentenced opposition leader Mariam al-Mahdi to a week in jail, while police detained several people intent on marching on parliament to protest a state of emergency. Al-Mahdi said she will spend a total of three weeks in jail after refusing to pay a fine of 2,000 Sudanese pounds (US$42). Deputy chief of the opposition Umma Party, led by her father and former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, she and her sister Rabah were among those arrested earlier on Sunday. Protest organizers had called for a march to challenge the state of emergency, imposed nationwide by President Omar al-Bashir on Feb. 22. “As some of our leaders came out of the party office to lead the march, security agents arrested them,” said Mohamed al-Mahdi, a party leader who is not related to the former prime minister’s family. Riot police fired tear gas at those who had gathered outside the party offices, witnesses said, prompting the crowd to disperse before the march could begin.
MALAWI
Floods kill 30 people
Floods in the nation’s south have killed 30 people and left more than 230,000 people without shelter, Homeland Security Minister Nicholas Dausi said on Sunday. Dausi visited people affected by the deluges in two of the 14 southern districts affected. He said his ministry — which is also responsible for disaster management affairs — had received reports of 30 deaths and about 238,000 villagers losing their homes since the start of the incessant downpours last week. “Their immediate needs are food, tents, blankets and chlorine to treat drinking water and anti-malaria medication,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Gentile sentence nears end
A reputed Connecticut mobster who authorities believe is the last surviving person of interest in the largest art heist in history is nearing the end of a four-year prison sentence in an unrelated weapons case. Eighty-two-year-old Robert Gentile is scheduled to be released from the Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey on Sunday. Federal prosecutors have said they believe Gentile has information about the still-unsolved 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Thieves stole an estimated US$500 million worth of art, including works by Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer. Gentile has denied knowing anything about it. He pleaded guilty in the weapons case stemming from federal agents’ seizure of firearms and ammunition from his Manchester home. He cannot possess firearms as a convicted felon.
UNITED STATES
‘Marvel’ soars in theaters
Captain Marvel has soared in North American theaters with weekend ticket sales of US$153 million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported. Added to the US$302 million taken in internationally, the film’s estimated total of US$455 million for the three-day weekend would give it the sixth-highest global debut ever and the best domestic start for a superhero film since Disney and Marvel’s Black Panther opened last year with US$202 million, Variety magazine reported. The film stars Brie Larson, winner of a 2016 Best Actress Oscar for Room, as Carol Danvers, a former fighter pilot who gains superhuman powers in an accident and finds herself in the middle of a galactic conflict. Also starring are Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Annette Bening and Jude Law.
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