CANADA
Rutte warns against cannabis
During a visit, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Thursday said people should not try cannabis, just one week after the nation legalized the drug. In the Netherlands the possession, consumption and sale of less than 5 grams of cannabis in special “coffee shops” has been allowed since 1976. However, for Rutte, it is better to keep a distance. Asked to comment on the recent legalization, he told the story of a relative whose marijuana over-consumption had serious mental health consequences. “The marijuana that you can buy today is so much stronger [than before], which is bad for the health, especially for the young,” he said. “The best policy on drugs for yourself is no first use. It sounds conservative, but I would urge you: Don’t try at all,” Rutte said in an address to high-school children, accompanied by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “If you do, at least make sure that you don’t move from this stuff to other drugs.” In becoming the first G20 country to legalize the growing, selling and use of cannabis, Ottawa hopes to ensure that “the person that is selling you marijuana at an official place doesn’t also have something else in their other pocket they are willing to sell you up on and further,” Trudeau said.
UNITED NATIONS
Fukushima returns criticized
A human rights expert is urging the Japanese government to stop children and women of reproductive age returning to areas near the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where radiation levels remain higher than what was considered safe before the 2011 nuclear disaster. Baskut Tuncak, an independent investigator on hazardous substances and wastes, on Thursday told a news conference that the Japanese government’s decision to raise by 20 times what it considered to be an acceptable level of radiation exposure was deeply troubling and could have a potentially grave impact on children’s health.
SOMALIA
Midnight closures enforced
Mogadishu Mayor Abdirahman Omar on Thursday ordered bars, restaurants and hotels along the city’s Lido beachfront to close at midnight after complaints from Islamic leaders. “In response to several complaints from society, notably religious leaders, the administration orders restaurants and hotels along the Lido beach to close after midnight,” Omar said in a statement. “Any restaurant or hotel which is at odds with the Islamic religion and the norms of Somali decency will be permanently closed,” he said, adding that drugs in particular would not be tolerated. The popularity of Lido beach establishments is testament to improved security in recent years in this part of the city.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees