COLOMBIA
Arrest of ex-rebels ordered
The Peace Tribunal has ordered the arrest of four rebel leaders who on Thursday appeared in a video pledging to resume their insurgency. The tribunal said in a statement that Luciano Marin, the former chief negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and top allies who appeared alongside him while heavily armed immediately lost their benefits under a 2016 peace deal on ending a half-century of bloody fighting. Under terms of the accord, rebels who confess their war crimes and compensate victims are spared jail sentences and protected from extradition to the US. The rebels said that they were taking up arms again because the conservative government of President Ivan Duque has not been upholding the accord and stood by as hundreds of leftists and 150 demobilized rebels were slain over the past three years.
EGYPT
Alexandria faces rising sea
The coastal city of Alexandria has survived invasions, fires and earthquakes since it was founded by Alexander the Great more than 2,000 years ago. However, the fabled port city now faces a new menace from climate change. Rising sea levels threaten to inundate poorer neighborhoods and archeological sites, prompting authorities to erect concrete barriers out at sea to hold back the surging waves. A severe storm in 2015 flooded large parts of the city, killing at least six people as two dozen homes collapsed, exposing weaknesses in the local infrastructure. The nation’s second-largest city is surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean and backs up to a lake, making it uniquely susceptible to the rise in sea levels caused by global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps.
UNITED STATES
Escaped pigs return to farm
About 250 pigs have been causing a ruckus in a Vermont town over the past month after they escaped from their enclosure, but most of them had been returned as of Thursday thanks in part to a trail of hot dog buns and good old-fashioned corralling. Several farm workers and a couple of volunteers trudged up and down a dirt road trying to drive any pigs back to Sugar Mountain Farm in Orange, Vermont. They chased the animals into the brush and ditches, working together to position themselves so that they could corral the large sows and boars. Farm owner Walter Jeffries said that the fence was damaged by vandalism on Aug. 11. About 50 adult pigs and 200 piglets escaped, he said. Town Clerk Angela Eastman said that some pigs could still be spotted on or along a road near the farm, which is creating a nuisance for drivers and walkers and could be dangerous for the pigs. Jeffries faces a fine of nearly US$82,000, because the animals have been or are in the town right of way, she said.
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