INDONESIA
Former first lady dies
Former first lady Ani Yudhoyono has died in Singapore. She was 66. The Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement of condolences that Yudhoyono passed away on Saturday morning. She was the wife of Indonesia’s sixth president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. She had been treated for cancer at the National University Hospital in Singapore for several months. She is survived by her husband, two sons and grandchildren.
KENYA
Huawei signs AU deal
Huawei Technologies on Friday said it had signed a draft agreement to reinforce its cooperation with the African Union (AU) in a number of areas, including in 5G communications that is at the heart of the Chinese telecom giant’s dispute with the US. The draft agreement would also reinforce their cooperation in areas such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and high-speed networks. The agreement follows one signed in 2015. “This collaboration is witness to the continued confidence between the African Union and Huawei,” said Philippe Wang, Huawei vice president of public affairs and communication for northern Africa. He added that this accord should put a rest to “rumours that Huawei equipment leaked data, given that the AU conducted a complete audit of its IT system ... and the conclusions rejected information that appeared in the press last year.” Last year, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that China had spied on the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, citing sources inside the organization.
HUNGARY
Boat crash search tricky
As divers on Friday descended into the Danube, Hungarian authorities predicted it would take an extended search to find the 21 people still missing after a boat carrying South Korean tourists was rammed by a cruise ship and sank into the river in Budapest. Seven people so far are confirmed dead and seven others were rescued. Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto and his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, visited the site of Wednesday’s accident and met with rescue and search officials before holding talks. “We have to prepare for a protracted search,” Szijjarto said he was told by Budapest river police, adding that authorities were also expecting help from Serbia, where the Danube flows after leaving Hungary. The Ministry of Interior said that about 60 experts were experimenting with theoretical models and test dives to find a “unique” method to salvage the sunken tour boat. It said the adverse conditions would not allow for the use of any traditional methods.
UNITED STATES
Elton John slams censorship
Elton John on Friday criticized Russia’s reported censorship of gay sex scenes in the new movie musical based on his life. John and the makers of Rocketman, which depicts the warts-and-all rise to fame of the gay British musician, issued a statement after Russian media reported that scenes involving gay sex and drug taking had been cut from a screening in Russia. “We reject in the strongest possible terms the decision to pander to local laws and censor Rocketman for the Russian market,” John and the filmmakers said. “That the local distributor has edited out certain scenes, denying the audience the opportunity to see the film as it was intended, is a sad reflection of the divided world we still live in and how it can still be so cruelly unaccepting of the love between two people,” their statement added.
‘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
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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
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