UNITED STATES
Ginsburg hospitalized
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized after experiencing chills and fever, the court said on Saturday. The court’s public information office in a statement said Ginsburg was admitted on Friday night to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She was initially evaluated at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington before being transferred to Johns Hopkins for further evaluation and treatment of any possible infection. With intravenous antibiotics and fluids, her symptoms abated and she expected to be released from the hospital as early as yesterday morning, the statement said. Earlier this month Ginsburg, 86, suffered what the court described as a stomach bug.
FRANCE
Autographed ‘Tintin’ sold
A print from a classic Tintin comic book signed by US astronaut Buzz Aldrin fetched 33,800 euros (US$37,250), triple the auction house’s estimate, at a Paris sale on Saturday. The image from Explorers on the Moon, a 1950s adventure where the Belgian reporter becomes the first human on the moon, features an inscription from Aldrin: “First moonwalkers after Tintin.” Aldrin was the second man to walk on the lunar surface after Neil Armstrong during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.
ITALY
Migrants rescued at sea
Coast guards on Saturday said they had rescued 143 migrants off the island of Lampedusa, although about 20 others were apparently missing, according to the survivors. “The crews of four patrols rescued 143 people who had fallen into the sea” from a 10m boat, the coast guard said in a statement. Two men, an Eritrean and a Libyan, said they had been unable to locate their wives following the rescue. A search for those missing continued on Saturday evening with two planes from Frontex — the border and coast guard agency for the EU’s Schengen area — and the Italian navy flying over the area. Police were also searching the Lampedusa coast to see if any of the migrants had managed to swim ashore. Those rescued were taken to Lampedusa, where they were allowed to disembark.
FRANCE
Heavy rains hit Cote d’Azur
Two people were missing and hundreds of homes flooded on Saturday as heavy rains hit the Cote d’Azur, disrupting air and rail transport and leading to hundreds of evacuations. One of the missing was a 77-year-old man. Near Muy, in the Car area, a woman was also missing after a lifeboat capsized with three crew members and three other people aboard. While five of them reached safety, she could not be found. Two other people were rushed to hospital as storms hit the area overnight. The two districts affected,
BRAZIL
Government ready for unrest
President Jair Bolsonaro said that his government is prepared for any unrest, as he expressed his concern about the wave of protests across South America. However, he said that he did not expect trouble in the country. “We always have to be prepared so that we are not surprised by events,” he told reporters at a military ceremony in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday. “There is no reason whatsoever, as we understand, for this movement to come here.” So far there have been no major demonstrations in the country, although the recent release from jail of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva might energize the opposition.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS