SOUTH KOREA
North not joining pig efforts
The government yesterday said that North Korea has so far ignored its calls for joint efforts to stem the spread of highly contagious African swine fever following an outbreak near North Korea’s border with China. Blood tests of pigs from about 340 farms near the inter-Korean border conducted through Tuesday came back negative, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said yesterday. Hundreds of fences and traps have been installed around the farms to prevent pigs from being infected by wild boars that roam in and out of North Korea.
INDIA
Climber recovery slow
Authorities would likely take about 10 days to recover the bodies of five missing climbers believed to have been killed in an avalanche high in the Himalayas, government and police officials said. Authorities would conduct another aerial reconnaissance tomorrow or Friday to find a way to reach the bodies of the missing climbers, or a team would be sent on foot after having time to acclimatize, the officials said. There is a possibility of another avalanche, which is a big risk to the operation, an Indo-Tibetan Border Police official said.
EGYPT
Militants attack Sinai: media
Militants launched attacks on a number of security checkpoints in northern Sinai, state TV reported yesterday. Medics and a security source told Reuters that at least three security personnel, including one officer, died, as well as one civilian in one of the attacks, medics and a security source said. Forces have long been battling Islamist militants behind a series of attacks on security forces and civilians in northern Sinai. The army and police launched a major security campaign against militants in February last year, following an attack in November 2017 on a mosque in which hundreds of worshipers died.
SYRIA
Al-Assad joins Eid prayers
President Bashar al-Assad yesterday attended a mosque in the capital Damascus for prayers marking the end of Ramadan, pictures posted by state media showed. Al-Assad joined dignitaries including the country’s top Muslim cleric, Ahmad Badredine Hassoun, for prayers in the Hafez al-Assad Mosque, named after his father and predecessor as president. In previous years, al-Assad has marked the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday with rare visits outside the capital. Last year, he visited the city of Tartus, in the heartland of his Alawaite sect on the Mediterranean coast, where key ally Russia maintains a naval base. In 2017, he visited the central city of Hama. Support from Russia, and from Iran and its allies, has enabled al-Assad’s forces to claw back most of the territory that they lost in the early years of the devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.
SUDAN
Death toll rises to 60: group
The number of people killed since security forces stormed a protest camp outside the Ministry of Defense in central Khartoum two days ago has risen significantly to 60, a doctors group linked to the opposition said yesterday. The death toll had earlier been put at 35. Talks between the Transitional Military Council, which has ruled since President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in April, and the opposition have ground to a halt amid deep differences over who would lead a three-year transition to democracy.
UKRAINE
Officers arrested for murder
Two police officers were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of murder, accused of fatally shooting a five-year-old boy while drunkenly firing weapons at cans and bottles in the courtyard of an apartment building. Kyrylo Tliavov last week was taken to hospital with a head injury and died late on Monday. His death sparked protests outside the Ministry of the Interior building by people who lit flares and held placards saying “the police kill people.” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he would do everything possible to ensure the guilty were punished.
IRELAND
Funeral limos for Trump
JP Ward & Sons, a funeral services home, rents out its fleet of Mercedes E-Class limousines not just to mourners, but to anyone who wants to travel in style. A killer price tag has not deterred the latest customer: the White House. It is so keen to use the vehicles for US President Donald Trump’s two-day visit that it is spending nearly US$1 million of US taxpayers’ money to rent them. Exactly why the president needs the limousines is unclear. If Trump and other senior members of his entourage travel by helicopter, they may have no need of the vehicles. If they visit the village of Doonbeg, as locals fervently hope, it will be a 12km round trip at a combined cost of US$73,049 per kilometer.
UNITED STATES
Charges over lack of action
Former Broward County deputy Scot Peterson, who failed to confront a gunman during the Parkland school massacre in Feb. 14 last year, on Tuesday was arrested on 11 criminal charges related to his actions, Broward State Attorney Mike Satz said in a statement. Peterson, 56, faces child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury charges that carry a combined potential prison sentence of nearly 100 years. Peterson was on duty as the school resource officer during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, but never went inside during the rampage.
MEXICO
Students given a choice
Mexico City officials have announced a “gender neutral” policy on school uniforms, saying boys can wear skirts and girls can wear pants if they want. Public schools across the nation for decades have required standardized plaid pants for boys and plaid skirts for girls, and students risked being sent home if they showed up in anything different. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday said that students at elementary or grade schools can wear pants or skirts without fear of punishment, adding “this is about equality and fairness.” Opponents quickly criticized the move on social media, asking “Education, or Indoctrination? Equality, or Imposing Gender Ideology?”
UNITED STATES
House help for ‘Dreamers’
The Democrat-dominated House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would create a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, but it faces dubious Senate chances. The White House has said President Donald Trump would veto the legislation if it reaches his desk as is. The bill, which would grant permanent protection to so-called “Dreamers” — people brought into the country illegally as children — was passed by a vote of 237 to 187. It would also set up a path for them to gain outright citizenship, together with individuals covered by so-called Temporary Protected Status, who fled their home countries because of armed conflict or natural disaster.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema