TURKEY
Coast guard saves migrants
The coast guard yesterday said it rescued 40 migrants stuck on an island after they attempted the crossing to Greece. Two helicopters and one boat were dispatched following a rescue request call by a migrant. Aerial footage showed groups of people on an island off the coast of the western province of Balikesir. Videos showed coast guard officers aiding women and children to board its ship.
UNITED STATES
Rick Scott wins Senate seat
Outgoing Florida Governor Rick Scott has narrowly won a Senate seat in a bitterly contested race with Senator Bill Nelson, official results showed on Sunday. Nelson conceded the seat he has held for three terms since 2001 after a machine and hand recount showed that Scott had edged out the Democrat by just more than 10,000 votes, or 50.05 percent to 49.93 percent, official final results showed. “Well, things worked out a little differently than Grace and I had hoped,” Nelson said in a video message posted on social media. He also warned of a “gathering darkness” in US politics.
GUATEMALA
Residents flee volcano
Disaster coordination authorities have asked eight communities to evacuate and go to safe areas after an increased eruption of the Volcano of Fire. The communities have about 2,000 residents, but each community can decide whether to evacuate or not. Antigua al Rescate, an organization that helped communities after a devastating eruption in June, and a newspaper in the capital reported that at least three communities were doing so. The volcano is located in the south-central part of the country. National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction spokesman David de Leon said that monitoring of the volcano’s activity on Sunday showed that the intensity of the eruption was being maintained, so the evacuation was called for to protect people.
UNITED STATES
Bloomberg funds alma mater
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday said that he would donate US$1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to boost financial aid for low and middle-income students. The university in Baltimore, Maryland, said that the contribution — the largest ever to any educational institution in the nation — would allow it to eliminate student loans in financial aid packages starting next fall. The university would instead offer scholarships that do not have to be repaid. University president Ronald Daniels said that Bloomberg’s contribution would also let the institution permanently commit to “need-blind admissions,” or the principle of admitting the highest-achieving students, regardless of their ability to pay for their education. “America is at its best when we reward people based on the quality of their work, not the size of their pocketbook,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Denying students entry to a college based on their ability to pay undermines equal opportunity.”
UNITED STATES
Sect massacre remembered
Ceremonies at a California cemetery marked the mass murders and suicides 40 years ago of 900 Americans orchestrated by the reverend Jim Jones at a jungle settlement in Guyana. The remains of more than 400 Jonestown victims are buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland. Jones’ adopted son, Jim Jones Jr, and other former Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ members on Sunday conducted a service at granite slabs bearing names of all 918 who died in Guyana on Nov. 18, 1978.
CHINA
Waste import ban expanding
The government is to expand its ban on imports of solid waste, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The move, which expands the prohibition to 32 categories of solid waste from the 24 banned last year, is to go into effect from Dec. 31, Xinhua said, citing four government agencies. Newly banned product types include hardware, ships, auto parts, stainless steel waste and scrap, titanium and wood, Xinhua said.
CAMBODIA
No to foreign bases
Phnom Penh will not allow foreign military bases on its soil, Prime Minister Hun Sen said during a Cabinet meeting yesterday, dismissing concerns about a possible Chinese naval facility. “I have received a letter from Mike Pence, US vice president, regarding concerns that there will be a China naval base in Cambodia,” he said during a live broadcast on Facebook. “The constitution of Cambodia bans the presence of foreign troops or military bases in its territory ... whether naval forces, infantry forces or air forces.” He said he would reply to Pence “to make him understand clearly about the issue.”
BRUNEI
Xi holds talks with sultan
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday was treated to an official welcome at Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah’s enormous, golden-domed palace yesterday. Xi arrived late on Sunday for a three-day state visit after the APEC summit wrapped up in Papua New Guinea. Xi and the sultan issued a joint statement after their talks yesterday in which Brunei said it would “continue to support and jointly promote cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative,” Xinhua reported.
INDIA
Temple protesters arrested
Police late on Sunday arrested 68 people taking part in overnight protests around the Sabarimala Dharma Sastha Temple in Kerala state ahead of a Supreme Court ruling yesterday on whether it should be given more time to let women enter. Police said many of those arrested had been protesting against a ban on spending the night on the hilltop around the temple.
AFGHANISTAN
No deal from Qatar talks
A three-day meeting last week between the Taliban and US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Qatar to pave the way for peace talks ended with no agreement, the group said yesterday. “These were preliminary talks and no agreement was reached on any issue,” spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement. The US embassy in Kabul declined to comment. On Sunday, Khalilzad declared a deadline of April to end the 17-year-long war, timed to coincide with national elections. However, his public statement that the Taliban believe they will “not win militarily” angered senior members of the group, who told US officials that mixed messages that could muddle the peace process.
IRAN
Hunt in Tehran for talks
British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt yesterday met his counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif, shortly after arriving in Tehran. Media reports said the nuclear deal with world powers was on the agenda, as well as an agreement aimed at facilitating financial transactions. Hunt was also expected to raise the case of charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in April 2016 and accused of plotting against the government.
‘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
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
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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