Centuries after it disintegrated with the decline of the Mongol empire and the rise of sea power, the old Silk Road is to be reinvented in a network of highways and arteries linking the remote desert of northwest China with cities in Europe, the Middle East and Russia.
China on Friday unveiled plans to build thousands of kilometers of roads to create a network that would broadly follow the ancient route linking old trading hubs such as Samarkand in Uzbekistan and Merv in Turkmenistan. The vast transport system is a crucial element in Beijing's strategy to tighten trade links with the oil and gas-rich countries of central Asia.
The longest new motorway, Asian Highway One, will stretch more than 5,000km from Urumqi in China's northwest region of Xinjiang to Istanbul in Turkey, Xinhua news agency said. Once completed in 2010, its route will take it through areas rich with untapped resources, including Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, and Mashhad in Iran. Eleven other roads will link Xinjiang to Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, the report said, citing the transportation department of Xinjiang.
The plan is part of an ambitious road map for Asia drawn up two years ago by China, Japan and 30 other nations. That 140,788km network of motorways, bridges and ferry routes will connect the trans-European landmass as never before -- surpassing the old Silk Road.
China is at the heart of the network. In addition to existing roads, it is building more than 15,000km of new highways. The primary motivation is to boost trade with neighboring countries and raise living standards in the far west.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
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