NORTH KOREA
Measures announced
The government is taking emergency measures to prevent the spread of African swine fever, state media said yesterday, weeks after confirming an outbreak in the country. The virus, fatal to wild boar and pigs, but harmless to humans, has cut a swathe through China, Vietnam and Mongolia before reaching the country. Pyongyang last month told the World Organisation for Animal Health that 77 out of 99 pigs had died from the disease at a farm near the Chinese border, the South Korean Ministry of Agriculture has said. Seoul has expressed concern over the possible spread of the disease across the border and repeatedly offered to assist with quarantine efforts, but said that Pyongyang had yet to respond. The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said that nationwide quarantine efforts were under way, including disinfecting farms and banning the distribution of pork products. “Emergency preventive efforts are actively under way all across the country to block the spread of the African swine fever,” it said.
CHINA
Flooding kills 19 people
Flooding caused by torrential rains has killed at least 19 people in the south, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. In the Guangxi region, which borders Vietnam, week-long downpours triggered floods in six cities, killing 12 and affecting more than 570,000 people, Xinhua said, citing the regional emergency management department. Houses collapsed and crops were damaged, it added. Rainfall was expected to intensify through today, the regional weather bureau said, according to Xinhua. In Guangdong Province, seven people were killed and one was missing as heavy rain destroyed roads and toppled houses, the report added.
UNITED STATES
Troops to head to Poland
The government was yesterday expected to announce that it would send about 1,000 additional troops and a squadron of Reaper drones to Poland to beef up the nation’s ability to defend itself amid worries about Russian military activity, officials said on Tuesday. A preliminary agreement avoids any permanent US base or presence in the country and sticks instead to a rotational force, they said. The Reaper drones would be used to provide greater intelligence to Poland, they added. An announcement was expected yesterday, when President Donald Trump meets with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House.
CANADA
Most Internet users fooled
About 86 percent of Internet users have been duped by misinformation, a global survey published on Tuesday showed. Respondents said that they want governments and social media companies to crack down on these activities, which are contributing to a growing distrust of the Internet, as well as negatively affecting economies and political discourse. The US took the lion’s share of the blame for spreading misinformation, followed by Russia and China, the annual Ipsos survey of more than 25,000 Internet users in 25 countries found. The results revealed widespread distrust of social media companies, and growing concerns over online privacy and biases baked into algorithms used by Internet companies.
MEXICO
Top diplomat to visit China
Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard on Tuesday said that he plans to visit China after a G20 summit in Japan later this month. “The meeting in China is very important, something that we’ve been planning for months,” Ebrard said at a banking conference, adding that the visit would take place early next month. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador last week said that he does not plan to travel to the G20 meeting in Osaka scheduled for June 28 to 29, adding that Ebrard and Secretary of Finance and Public Credit Carlos Urzua would represent him instead. It is to be the first time a Mexican president skips the summit of the most powerful world leaders.
UNITED STATES
Trump decries CIA sources
Trump on Tuesday took a public stance against the use of CIA informants to spy on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, possibly taking away a valuable tool of the intelligence community. Trump spoke a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Kim’s slain half brother, Kim Jong-nam, was a source for the CIA. “I saw the information about the CIA, with respect to his brother, or half brother, and I would tell him [Kim Jong-un] that would not happen under my auspices, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t let that happen under my auspices,” Trump said.
BRAZIL
Official says firing political
The head of the National Indian Foundation on Tuesday said that he was fired due to pressure from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, which under President Jair Bolsonaro is seeking to open reservation lands to commercial agriculture and mining. Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas was dismissed by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, which oversees the agency, the ministry confirmed. In remarks to agency employees, De Freitas blamed Luiz Antonio Nabhan Garcia, secretary of land affairs in the agriculture ministry, for his dismissal. De Freitas said that Bolsonaro was “very poorly advised.”
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