INDONESIA
Election duties kill officers
Nine police officers died while carrying out election-related duties last week, including some who collapsed from exhaustion. Others died in accidents and after getting sick, the Cabinet secretary said in a statement. The government on Wednesday deployed about 7.2 million poll workers to wrap up the world’s largest single-day democratic election in just six hours. More than 190 million people were registered to vote, with a turnout rate exceeding 80 percent. President Joko Widodo has claimed victory in the election, citing unofficial quick-count results.
SYRIA
IS kills 27 fighters
Islamic State (IS) extremists have killed 27 fighters in the desert, in what a monitoring group yesterday said was their deadliest operation since the fall of the “caliphate.” The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that four senior army officers were among the troops and allied militiamen killed in the desert east of Homs Governorate over the past 48 hours. The Amaq propaganda arm of IS said its fighters carried out the operation. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said that it was the “biggest attack and the highest death toll among regime forces since the caliphate was declared defeated.”
LIBERIA
Snakes block Weah’s office
President George Weah has been barred from his office for five days by two black snakes that slithered into the building last week, authorities said on Friday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs building where Weah has his office must be fumigated to chase out the reptiles, which showed up near the ground-floor elevator on Wednesday. A ministry statement said that all operations, including the issuance of passports and visas, were suspended until Wednesday owing to the presence of toxic fumes. “Indeed, the fumigation exercise was triggered by the presence of the snakes,” presidential spokesman Smith Tobay said.
TURKEY
Suspected UAE spies nabbed
The government has arrested two men suspected of spying for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is probing whether they are tied to Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, the official Anadolu news agency reported on Friday. The two were formally detained by authorities as part of an investigation by Istanbul prosecutors into alleged spying by the UAE, Anadolu reported. The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper reported that the two suspects were on Monday arrested in a joint operation by police and intelligence services. The pair, both UAE citizens, had been in contact with an individual who was under surveillance in the Khashoggi case, the paper reported.
UNITED STATES
Couple wed at baggage claim
Proving that life and love can be a carousel, a couple was yesterday to marry at the Ohio airport baggage claim where they met 12 years ago. Michelle Belleau’s boss sent her to pick up Ron Peterson at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in 2007. A long-distance relationship developed, with Belleau in Cleveland, Ohio, and Peterson in Los Angeles. They were to marry at a spot that Belleau said “couldn’t be more perfect,” the Plain Dealer reported. Belleau said that airports became happy and sad places for the couple as they would reunite and then too quickly have to depart. Southwest Airlines agreed to move arriving bags to another carousel to make way for the ceremony.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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