GABON
Nigerien stabs two Danes
Two Danes were on Saturday wounded in a knife attack in Gabon’s capital apparently committed in retribution for “US attacks against Muslims,” a rare assault in a Central African nation that has escaped extremist violence. The two men, who were working for the National Geographic channel, were stabbed while shopping in a market popular with tourists, Minister of Defense Etienne Massard said, adding that the attack appeared to be politically motivated. “According to the first testimonies at the scene, the assailant, a 53-year-old Nigerien man, shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ [Arabic for ‘God is great’] during the attack. He was arrested on the spot,” Massard said.
CHILE
Mudslide kills at least five
A mudslide fueled by heavy rains on Saturday swept over a village in the south, leaving at least five people dead and 15 missing, officials said. Rain caused a river to overflow and the side of a hill to collapse, burying 20 of the 200 houses in Villa Santa Lucia in the Los Lagos region, 1,272km south of the capital, Santiago. President Michelle Bachelet declared the region a catastrophe zone and confirmed the number of dead and missing. She met with her team of ministers to coordinate rescue and assistance efforts. Earlier on Saturday, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Madmud Aleuy said there were three people dead, including an unidentified tourist, and 15 others missing.
PHILIPPINES
Thousands stranded by storm
Thousands of people heading home for Christmas were yesterday stranded by Tropical Depression Kai-Tak, a day after the storm killed three people as it pounded the nation’s eastern islands. The storm has weakened, with gusts of up to 90kph, after cutting off power and triggering landslides in a region devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan four years ago, state weather forecasters said. Disaster officials yesterday said that more floods and landslides were possible and that 15,500 passengers were stranded because ferry services remained suspended in parts of the country.
LIBYA
Refugees rescued at sea
The coast guard rescued at least 270 refugees off the country’s shores, a navy official said on Saturday, bringing to more than 450 the total number of refugees they have rescued in less than a week. El-Hadi Kheil said that the Arab and African refugees, who included women and children, were found at sea in an area between the coastal towns of Garabulli and Zliten, east of the capital, Tripoli, where they were taken to a naval base. “We were lost and didn’t know where to direct our boat,” Omar Yusef, a Sudanese refugee, told reporters. “We called the coast guard and a helicopter came and guided us.”
UNITED STATES
Burros caught in wildfire
Nine burros that are a favorite of visitors to South Dakota’s Custer State Park have been burned in a wildfire and it is not known if all of them would survive, a park official said on Saturday. The park reported that all nine burros had been found — a day after three of them were reported missing and feared dead in the wildfire that has consumed more than 218km2, but all nine were burned and are being treated by a veterinarian. Some were not injured as badly as others, but their chances of survival and the severity of their injuries might not be known for some time, park visitor services program manager Kobee Stalder said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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