AUSTRIA
Vienna retains top ranking
Vienna has retained its ranking as the world’s most livable city, according to an annual report released yesterday by the Economist. Vienna once again came ahead of Melbourne — which had held the top ranking for seven years until losing it to Vienna last year — an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report said. The top two were followed by Sydney; Osaka, Japan; and Calgary, Alberta. Each year, the EIU gives 140 cities scores out of 100 on a range of factors such as living standards, crime, transport infrastructure, access to education and healthcare, as well as political and economic stability. Vienna scored 99.1 points out of 100, as it did last year. For the first time, the index noted the effects of climate change on livability, with New Delhi and Cairo plunging in the rankings to 118th and 125th place respectively due to poor air quality, undesirable average temperatures and inadequate water provision.
UNITED STATES
Panel rejects district maps
A North Carolina judicial panel on Tuesday rejected state legislative district maps, saying that legislators took extreme advantage in drawing voting districts to help elect a maximum number of Republican lawmakers. The judges gave lawmakers two weeks to try again. The three-judge panel of state trial judges unanimously ruled that courts can step in to decide when partisan advantage goes so far it diminishes democracy. Their ruling came after the Supreme Court in June ruled in a separate case involving North Carolina’s congressional map that it was not the job of federal courts to decide if boundaries are politically unfair — although state courts could consider whether gerrymandering stands up under state laws and constitutions.
UNITED STATES
Judge orders opioid trial
A judge on Tuesday rejected efforts by major drugmakers, pharmacies and distributors to dismiss claims that they caused the nation’s opioid crisis, clearing the way for a scheduled landmark trial even as he pushes for a nationwide settlement. District Judge Dan Polster, who oversees about 2,000 opioid lawsuits by states, counties and cities, said that the plaintiffs could try to prove that drugmakers’ deceptive marketing of the painkillers caused a harmful, massive increase in supply that pharmacies and distributors did not do enough to stop. The ruling was among seven decisions and orders totaling 80 pages from Polster ahead of a scheduled Oct. 21 trial by two Ohio counties against Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin maker accused of fueling the epidemic, and several other defendants.
VENEZUELA
Maduro orders border drills
President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday ordered the military to hold exercises along the border with Colombia, accusing Colombian President Ivan Duque of plotting an attack as tensions mounted between the two countries. It was the latest salvo between Maduro and Duque, who have accused each other in the past few days of harboring militants. “Columbia’s government doesn’t want peace,” Maduro told a class of officers in a nationally televised military ceremony. “It wants war. It wants violence.” Tensions flared last week when the former chief negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia announced in a video that he would take up arms, saying that the Colombian government has failed to uphold a 2016 peace accord. Maduro ordered Venezuela’s armed forces to be on alert and called for more than two weeks of maneuvers to start on Tuesday next week.
IRAN
Compliance stipulation set
The nation yesterday said it would resume full compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal if it can sell its oil or get a US$15 billion credit line guaranteed by future crude sales. However, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi expressed doubt that such a plan could be agreed before a looming deadline to further scale back its commitments under the nuclear accord. Araghchi ruled out any renegotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but said that Iran is open to talks on how to implement it better. “I don’t think the European countries will be able to take an effective step before Friday ... so we will take the third step,” he added.
MALAYSIA
Najib accused of debt offer
A witness in former prime minister Najib Razak’s trial testified that Najib offered projects to China in exchange for help resolving 1MDB’s debt. Fugitive financier Jho Low represented Najib in a meeting with China’s Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which was attended by witness Amhari Efendi Nazaruddin, a former aide to Najib. Low and Najib planned to use agreements with Chinese state-linked companies to bail out 1MDB’s debt, Amhari said. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s administration has not confirmed the talks. The commission was offered projects including the East Coast Rail Link, the witness said, which had been put on hold by Mahathir before being resumed at a lower cost. The Trans-Sabah gas pipeline, a Kuala Lumpur-Bangkok high-speed rail and the development of offshore financial hub Labuan were also tabled at the meeting, he said.
AUSTRALIA
Study affirms CCP campaign
Hundreds of Chinese accounts suspended by Twitter were part of a disinformation operation for years targeting critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), researchers have found. After combing through 3.6 million tweets from 940 suspended Twitter accounts, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said that the accounts had conducted “blunt-force influence” campaigns for “at least two years.” The most intense information operation targeted billionaire businessman Guo Wengui (郭文貴), who fled into exile after being accused of corruption, according to the study published on Tuesday. The tweets often came during work hours in Beijing and stopped on weekends and Chinese public holidays. “This was a blunt-force influence operation, using spam accounts to disseminate messaging, leveraging an influence-for-hire network,” the study said.
INDONESIA
Garbage shipped back
Hundreds of shipping containers filled with garbage have been sent back to their nations of origin, the Directorate-General of Customs and Excise said yesterday. About 250 containers seized in the past few months have already been returned and authorities are inspecting more than 1,000 others, a customs official said. Among them, 49 containers of waste seized on Batam Island have been shipped back to the US, Germany, France, Hong Kong and Australia, agency spokesman Deni Surjantoro said. The shipments were loaded with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials in contravention of import rules. Nearly 200 containers have also been shipped out of Surabaya to the US, Britain and Germany. Authorities near Jakarta are gearing up to send back about 150 containers while inspecting more than 1,000 others that could contain banned materials, Surjantoro said.
NEW ZEALAND
Five Chinese die in crash
Five Chinese were killed and another six injured when a tourist bus veered off a highway and flipped during bad weather in North Island, police said. Twenty-seven people were in the vehicle when it crashed about 20km outside Rotorua, a popular tourist town in the Bay of Plenty area known for its hot springs. Two of the survivors were seriously injured and four were moderately hurt, inspector Brent Crowe told reporters. He declined to give details of the deceased, saying authorities were still working to identify them and contact their families in China. He said the driver was not seriously injured and an investigation into the cause of the crash was under way. The Chinese embassy in Wellington told TVNZ that Ambassador Wu Xi (吳璽) was on her way to the crash site to help the victims.
MONGOLIA
Putin promises financial aid
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday promised to help finance new infrastructure in the nation, as the landlocked country looks to reduce its reliance on Beijing. “Russia will never forget Mongolia’s help and support when Russia was fighting against the Nazis,” Putin said, joining in a celebration to mark the 80th anniversary of a battle fought by Mongolian and Russian soldiers against the invading Japanese army in 1939. Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga and Putin signed a series of agreements, including joint investment funds to finance infrastructure developments, with Moscow lending 100 billion rubles (US$1.5 billion) in a gift for the battle anniversary. Battulga said that he planned to use the aid to build new railroads to the Chinese border to open one more channel for coal and mineral export. The nation hopes to build its own terminal in a Russian port to facilitate exports of natural resources, he added.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number