MEXICO
Kidnapping sparks fire
Townspeople angry over the feared kidnapping of a priest set fire inside an eastern town’s municipal building on Saturday, weeks after two other clerics were killed in the same state, Veracruz. Dozens of protesters had stormed the town hall in Catemaco earlier in the day and returned in the evening to burn part of it, demanding that Father Jose Luis Sanchez Ruiz be found alive. They also torched a police car. Father Aaron Reyes, spokesman for the diocese of San Andres Tuxtla, said the protesters are not linked to the church and used the priest’s disappearance as a motive to protest. Sanchez Ruiz, 54, was last seen on Thursday. He had received threats after complaining about crime in Catemaco, according to a priest who requested anonymity for security reasons.
IRAQ
HRW warns over Peshmerga
Kurdish security forces have unlawfully destroyed Arab homes and villages in the north of the country over the past two years in what may amount to a war crime, rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are part of a 100,000-strong alliance that is battling to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group, but has so far gained just a small foothold in the city. HRW said in a report that violations between September 2014 and May in 21 towns and villages within disputed areas of Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces had followed “a pattern of apparently unlawful demolitions.”
UNITED STATES
Farage meets Trump
British European Parliament member and Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage has become the first British politician to meet with president-elect Donald Trump since his win, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) confirmed late on Saturday. Trump hosted Farage at his New York City residence, where they spent over an hour discussing the Republican’s “victory, global politics, and the status of Brexit,” according to a UKIP statement. Farage later tweeted a photograph of himself with Trump, both men standing in front of a pair of golden doors and smiling broadly, Trump giving the camera a thumbs-up sign.
MOLDOVA
Polls open for runoff
Moldovans yesterday went to the polls to choose between pro-Moscow and pro-European candidates in a runoff vote for president. It marks the first time in 16 years that the nation, wracked by corruption scandals in recent years, is electing its leader by national vote instead of having parliament select the head of state. A preliminary result is to be announced early today.
UNITED STATES
Bikers help Springsteen
Coming across Bruce Springsteen on a broken down motorcycle on the side of the road could probably be a lyric from one of his songs, but it really happened for a group of guys from New Jersey. A group from the Freehold American Legion was riding after a Veterans Day event on Friday when Dan Barkalow says he saw a stranded motorcyclist near Allaire State Park in Wall Township. “I stopped to see if he needed help, and it was Bruce,” Barkalow said. The group tried to help get his bike running, but when they could not, Springsteen hopped on the back of Ryan Bailey’s bike and they headed to a bar. “We sat there and shot the breeze for a half hour, 45 minutes till his ride showed up,’’ Barkalow said. “Nice guy, real down to earth. Just talked about motorcycles and his old Freehold days.”
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
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