UKRAINE
Russia ‘threatens open war’
The risk of open war with Russia is greater than it was a year ago and Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun an “information war” against Germany, President Petro Poroshenko told the German newspaper Bild in an interview published yesterday. Poroshenko said Moscow had implemented “not one single point” of the Minsk accord and was building up its military presence on the border between the two nations. “Russia is investing a great deal in war preparations,” he said.
SPAIN
Sanchez to form government
King Felipe VI on Tuesday gave Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) Secretary-General Pedro Sanchez the tough task of forming a government in a bid to end a potentially damaging political deadlock more than six weeks after inconclusive elections. The nation has been mired in uncertainty since polls in December last year saw the incumbent conservative People’s Party (PP) win most seats, but fall short of an absolute majority as voters flocked to two upstart political groupings. Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy struggled to form a government as other parties consistently refused to support him, citing inequalities created by drastic spending cuts implemented during his four-year term, as well as corruption scandals afflicting the PP. The PSOE came second in the polls.
ITALY
Smoking laws toughened
Smokers are now facing fines of up to 500 euros (US$600) if they light up in a car with a child or pregnant woman — or if they toss a cigarette butt on the street — after new health and environmental laws went into effect on Tuesday. The smoking prohibitions extend bans on smoking in offices, restaurants, movie theaters and other public places to the more private sphere of a car. They also specifically target pediatric hospitals and other medical facilities catering to pregnant women and newborns in a bid to cut the estimated between 70,000 and 83,000 deaths a year the government attributes to tobacco smoke.
FRANCE
Paris to rent out mopeds
Electric mopeds will be available for hire around Paris from this summer following an “encouraging” trial of the public scheme, the mayor’s office announced on Tuesday. The service will see 1,000 scooters gradually deployed around the city, available to anyone aged over 20 with a moped license. The electric bikes will be available from 7am until 1am daily.
ITALY
Pope to be in movie
Pope Francis is to be the first pope to appear in a film, playing himself in Beyond the Sun, an Italian-made family movie based on the gospels, which was inspired by the pope’s call for filmmakers to cater to children when thinking about how Jesus’ message should be communicated through cinema. All profits from the film are to be donated to two Argentine charities that help at-risk children and young adults.
GERMANY
Condom law proposed
The government will soon require all clients of prostitutes to use condoms, according to a draft law approved on Tuesday. The new rule, which will go into force in July next year if it secures parliamentary backing, is part of a package of measures aimed at offering greater protection to sex workers. Among other measures agreed under the package are tougher rules governing the ownership of brothels.
MYANMAR
Upper house chair chosen
The upper house of parliament yesterday voted in its opening session for an ally of Aung San Suu Kyi to serve as its chairman, bringing the legislature closer to naming a new president. The National League for Democracy, which gained a dominant majority in both houses in November last year polls, chose Mahn Win Khaing Than, a member of the Karen ethnic minority group and a grandson of a Cabinet minister assassinated alongside Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s father in 1947, to serve as the chairman. Aye Thar Aung, an ethnic Rakhine from the Arakan National Party, was elected as deputy chairman.
CHINA
Stranded travelers upgraded
Rail authorities offered 10,000 stranded Lunar New Year travelers free upgrades to high-speed trains yesterday as they tackled a huge backlog of passengers stuck in Guangzhou by snow and ice. Vast numbers were held up at two stations in Guangzhou when their outbound trains were many hours late reaching the city and about 33,000 were still stranded at Guangzhou Station by midday yesterday, China Central Television said. Rail authorities called up four high-speed trains from other areas to run extra services to destinations north of the city to reduce the crowds, the Guangzhou Railway (Group) Corp said in a statement.
MALAYSIA
State chief minister resigns
A leading politician relinquished his post as a state chief minister yesterday in what is widely seen as the latest move by scandal-plagued Prime Minister Najib Razak to purge potential rivals. Ruling party politician Mukhriz Mahathir, son of former longtime prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, resigned as head of Kedah State following an internal party push to oust him, media reported. Mukhriz had been mentioned among potential future contenders for prime minister, but his fortunes have flagged due to his outspoken father’s ongoing campaign to oust Najib over sensational corruption allegations.
GAZA STRIP
Militants die in tunnel
The collapse of a tunnel has killed two militants from Hamas’ armed wing, officials said yesterday, as concern grows in Israel over the rebuilding of tunnels that can be used for attacks. The collapse on Tuesday night was the second such incident since last week. Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said a local commander was among the two members killed in Tuesday’s collapse in the area of the Nuseirat refugee camp. Ismail Haniya, Hamas’ chief in Gaza, has vowed to continue building tunnels that have in the past been used to stage attacks against Israel and store weapons.
SOUTH AFRICA
Zuma to pay back funds
President Jacob Zuma will pay back some of the public funds used to upgrade his private home, his office said yesterday, attempting to end a two-year scandal that has plagued his government. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, the country’s ombudswoman, ruled in 2014 that Zuma and his family had “benefited unduly” from the work on his rural residence of Nkandla. Among the supposed security upgrades were a swimming pool described as a fire-fighting facility, a chicken run, a cattle enclosure, an amphitheater and a visitors’ center. The exact sum would be determined by the treasury and police ministry, the office said.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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