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.
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