TURKEY
Army starts drill at border
The armed forces yesterday started a military drill at the Iraqi border, the army said, a week ahead of a referendum on Kurdish independence in northern Iraq which Ankara has asked to be called off. On Saturday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the planned referendum on Monday is an issue of national security, and warned that Ankara would take any necessary steps in response. In a statement, the military said its operations targeting militant groups in the Iraq border region would continue at the same time as the drill.
FRANCE
US students attacked
Four US college students were sprayed in the face with acid on Sunday at a train station in Marseille. Boston College in Massachusetts said in a statement that the four female students were treated at a hospital for burns. The statement said the four all were juniors studying abroad, three of them at the college’s Paris program. Local officials said two of the women were not seriously hurt, but were treated for shock. Police described the suspect, a 41-year-old woman, as “disturbed” with a history of mental health problems, but no apparent past links to extremism. Regional newspaper La Provence said the assailant remained at the site of the attack without trying to flee.
PERU
President shuffles Cabinet
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Sunday made Vice President Mercedes Araoz his new prime minister in a Cabinet shuffle that won praise from the opposition — a sign his year-old government will likely avoid a fresh standoff with Congress. Kuczynski also swore in Deputy Economy Minister Claudia Cooper as his new finance minister and replaced his justice, education, health and housing ministers. Kuczynski was forced to form a new Cabinet after Congress on Friday revoked its confidence in the outgoing one following a dispute over a teachers strike and his government’s education policies that stress gender equality in the school curriculum.
MEXICO
Nine killed in shootout
The military fought back against an armed attack in Guerrero state on Saturday night, leaving eight suspected gang members and one soldier dead, authorities said on Sunday. At about 11pm, troops were making their rounds in the city of Teloloapan, about 250km from Mexico City, when they came under gunfire from suspected gang members dressed in fake military uniforms, Roberto Alvarez Heredia, a spokesman for the Guerrero Coordinating Group, said in a statement. The military secured two vans painted in camouflage, weapons and uniforms, authorities said. A soldier was wounded in the confrontation and died afterward from his injuries.
SPAIN
Police seize pamphlets
Police on Sunday seized 1.3 million pamphlets and posters supporting Catalonia’s independence referendum, the latest move to try to block the vote. Catalonia’s pro-separatist government is determined to hold a referendum on Oct. 1, despite it being banned by the nation’s Constitutional Court. The documents were seized at an advertising distribution company near Barcelona, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement. Among the documents were about 700,000 leaflets promoting a “Yes” vote in the referendum and 370,000 fliers with logo of the Catalan government along with 138,000 posters for the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy party.
MACAU
Democracy activist elected
Voters have elected a young pro-democracy activist to the territory’s legislature, as opposition lawmakers expanded their presence at the expense of candidates linked to the gambling industry. Official results showed that 26-year-old Sulu Sou (蘇嘉豪) won a seat in Sunday’s poll, making him the territory’s youngest-ever lawmaker. Sou’s party, the New Macau Association, favors full democracy for the 33-seat legislature, where only 14 seats are directly elected and the rest are filled by pro-establishment labor unions and special interest groups or appointed. Another surprise winner was university professor Agnes Lam (林玉鳳). There were few other changes to the rest of the directly elected seats, which remain dominated by pro-Beijing representatives.
JAPAN
Typhoon Talim kills two
Typhoon Talim ripped through the archipelago yesterday, leaving two people dead and three missing, officials and news reports said. Talim made landfall on Sunday in Kyushu, packing winds of up to 162kph, officials said. It reached Hokkaido yesterday morning, dumping torrential rain and paralyzing transportation on its way. NHK said 38 people had been injured in storm-related accidents.
NEPAL
Voting opens in south
The southern plains yesterday began voting in the final round of municipal elections, an important step before a general election in November. The voting covers parts of the restive southern plains that border India and are dominated by the ethnic Madhesi people. More than 2.6 million people are eligible to choose more than 6,000 representatives in 136 municipalities, officials said. The Madhesis are demanding a unified homeland and greater participation in state organs, including parliament, the judiciary, bureaucracy and the army.
PAKISTAN
Ex-PM’s wife wins seat
Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League party, the wife of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has won his parliament seat, which fell vacant after the Supreme Court disqualified him for concealing assets, unofficial results showed yesterday. She won 61,254 votes in Sunday’s by-election for a seat in Lahore, defeating Tahreek-e-Insaf’s candidate Yasmin Rashid, even though she campaigned in absentia because she is undergoing treatment in London for throat cancer.
CHINA
Japanese man held as spy
Authorities yesterday arrested a Japanese man in Dalian suspected of spying, the official Dalian Daily’s online report said. Ken Higuchi was being investigated by the Dalian City National Security Bureau on suspicion of spying against China, and that prosecutors had approved his arrest. However, it was unclear from the report whether Higuchi was a new case or whether he had been detained earlier, and the latest development was his formal arrest.
MALAYSIA
Beer festival canned
Organizers have canned an annual craft beer festival after the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party warned it would turn Kuala Lumpur into “the biggest center of vice in Asia.” The Better Beer Festival, billed as the nation’s biggest craft beer festival, was due to take place on Oct. 6 and Oct. 7. The organizers yesterday said the festival would not go ahead after city officials instructed them to cancel it due to licensing issues.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS