MEXICO
Protest over energy reform
Tens of thousands of people marched in Mexico City on Friday to protest constitutional reforms pushed through by President Enrique Pena Nieto that open the oil and gas industry to foreign investment. An estimated 65,000 people gathered for the protest in the main square, an official at the Secretariat of Public Safety said. About 2,500 police officers were deployed, but there were no incidents of violence, the official said. The march was organized by the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution. The reforms were approved in congress and ratified by a majority of states late last year.
UNITED STATES
Obama to visit Saudi
President Barack Obama plans to travel to Saudi Arabia next month on a mission to smooth tensions with Riyadh over policy on Iran’s nuclear program and the civil war in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Obama is preparing to meet with King Abdullah for a summit, the paper said, citing unnamed Arab officials briefed on the meetings. “This is about a deteriorating relationship” and declining trust, a senior Arab official said in discussing the need for the summit, which was pulled together in recent days, the newspaper reported. A White House spokeswoman declined to comment.
UNITED STATES
No immunity for India envoy
Federal prosecutors say an Indian diplomat who was strip-searched when arrested on charges she fraudulently obtained a work visa for her housekeeper and lied about the housekeeper’s pay is not covered by diplomatic immunity. Prosecutors say in papers filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court that since Devyani Khobragade is no longer in the country, she is not immune from prosecution. The papers also say the immunity she would have enjoyed at the consular level would not protect against the charges in this case. Khobragade was the deputy consul-general in New York City. The Department of State ordered to her to leave the country last month following her indictment.
ECUADOR
Paper fined over cartoon
The media oversight agency fined the newspaper El Universo for a cartoon it published about prosecutors’ Dec. 27 search of the home of a journalist who has since left the country, authorities said on Friday. The agency also said Xavier Bonilla has 72 hours to “correct” his cartoon, which portrays soldiers slamming a door down onto Fernando Villavicencio and hauling computers and boxes of files from his home. Villavicencio investigates oil industry corruption and President Rafael Correa’s administration said he illegally obtained e-mails from Correa’s account. The agency said the cartoon “did not correspond to reality.” It fined El Universo 2 percent of its revenues from the past three months.
UNITED STATES
Warships off to Black Sea
Officials say the first of two warships heading into the Black Sea in advance of the Olympic Games has sailed from Italy. The USS Mount Whitney got under way on Friday from Gaeta and the frigate USS Taylor was expected to leave from Naples yesterday. The officials spoke about the warships on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly disclose ship movements. The FBI also said at least two dozen agents are going to Sochi, Russia. FBI Director James Comey said Russian authorities face a serious threat and he wants the FBI to be ready to help.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
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