UNITED STATES
CIA to fight Mexican cartels
New CIA operatives and retired military personnel are being sent to Mexico and may deploy private security contractors to fight drug cartels, the New York Times said. Small numbers of CIA operatives and civilian employees have been posted at a Mexican military base, it said late on Saturday. Security officials from both countries work there side by side in collecting information about drug cartels and helping plan operations, the report said. Officials are also looking into embedding a team of US contractors inside a specially vetted Mexican counter-narcotics police unit, it said. The new efforts have been devised to get around Mexican laws prohibiting foreign military and police from operating on its soil.
UKRAINE
US urges ex-PM’s release
The US called on Saturday for the immediate release of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko following her dramatic arrest during trial. A statement published on the US’ Kiev embassy Web site said Tymoshenko’s detention “raised concerns internationally about the application of the rule of law in Ukraine and further contributes to the appearance of politically-motivated prosecutions.” A Kiev court on Friday placed Tymoshenko under arrest for contempt of court during her ongoing trial on charges of abuse of power, which she claims is a vendetta pursued by her rival, President Viktor Yanukovych.
UNITED STATES
US Jews pressure Cuba
American Jews urged Cuban President Raul Castro on Saturday to release a US contractor “on humanitarian grounds” after Cuba’s highest court upheld a 15-year sentence. In his appeal, Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Their Descendants, said that Alan Gross has lost 40kg and “is suffering from serious physical ailments as well as from extreme mental stress and anguish.” Gross’s daughter and mother-in-law are battling cancer, a point cited by critics of his incarceration. “Holocaust survivors wish to renew their heartfelt appeal to release Alan Gross from prison on humanitarian grounds and allow him to be reunited with his family in the United States,” Steinberg said in a statement.
FRANCE
TV satellites launched
An Ariane-5 rocket placed two telecommunications satellites into geostationary orbit early on Saturday, the 45th successive success for the European rocket, Arianespace announced. The rocket blasted off from the European space center at Kourou, French Guiana. The two satellites are the Astra 1N, belonging to Luxembourg’s SES Astra, and the BSAT-3c/JCSAT-110R, owned by Japan’s B-SAT Corp and SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. The Astra 1N will provide direct-to-home television services across Europe for 15 years while the other will help provide television services in Japan.
FRANCE
Mushroom eaters taken ill
Tourists and locals alike are flocking to hospital wards in the southwest after eating mushrooms that this year sprouted much earlier than usual due to the rainy summer, officials said yesterday. Twenty-one people were treated for diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pains on Friday in hospitals in the Lot department, after munching on what they thought were edible mushrooms. Thirty more have been treated in the nearby Tarn-et-Garonne department over the past two weeks, while dozens more may have been affected, but not sought medical treatment, hospital officials said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees