AFGHANISTAN
Kabul, Taliban differ on talks
State Minister for Peace Affairs Abdul Salam Rahimi yesterday said the government would hold its first-ever direct talks with the Taliban within two weeks, but the insurgents quickly denied any such meeting was planned. Rahimi said that a 15-member government delegation would meet with the Taliban in Europe, without elaborating, but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said “there has been no agreement on such a meeting and that has not been coordinated with Taliban.”
SYRIA
IS claims suicide attack
The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed six soldiers in Daraa Province. The group said it was responsible for a “suicide operation” on Saturday, during which one of its fighters sprayed soldiers with machine-gun fire before detonating an “explosive vest.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said six soldiers were killed and several other people wounded. It said a bomber riding a motorcycle blew himself up at a military checkpoint.
MYANMAR
Landslide kills 13 at mine
At least 13 jade mine workers and security guards were yesterday killed in a landslide, authorities said, as rescuers frantically searched for more victims. The fire services department said on Facebook that the accident happened in the early morning in Hpakant township in the north. “We have sent two injured men and the dead bodies of 13 men” to a local hospital, the department said. A police officer on the scene said that the upper part of a mine collapsed and fell about 200m onto those sleeping below. Heavy rains pounded the area over the past week, the officer said.
NIGERIA
WHO secures Ebola funds
WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus on Saturday said a shortage in funding to halt the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was finally being filled. Tedros told a summit meeting in Abuja that several countries had renewed pledges of financial aid after the Ebola outbreak was declared an international emergency earlier this month. “Especially in the last couple of weeks there is renewed commitment to finance the shortages we were facing,” he said. The support raised hopes the epidemic could be restrained, he said.
AUSTRALIA
Abortion to be decriminalized
Abortion could soon be decriminalized nationwide, with the last holdout state set to consider a new law this week that would remove terminations from the criminal code. Under legislation dating back to 1900, women in New South Wales who have abortions and their doctors can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. The procedure is only considered legal if the doctor believes the woman’s physical or mental health is in danger.
VIETNAM
Rhino horns seized
Fifty-five pieces of rhino horn were found encased in plaster at an airport in Hanoi, authorities said yesterday. The 125kg haul of rhino horn discovered at Noi Bai airport on Thursday was found after the carefully disguised shipment aroused suspicion. Police used rods to break the casts apart. “It took half a day to break them open,” a security source said. It was not immediately clear which African country the shipment originated from.
ISRAEL
Missile inteceptor tested
The Ministry of Defense and the US successfully carried out tests of a ballistic missile interceptor that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday said provides protection against potential threats from Iran. The tests of the Arrow-3 system were carried out in Alaska and it successfully intercepted targets above the atmosphere, the ministry said in a statement. “The flight tests were conducted in Alaska in order to test capabilities that may not be tested in Israel,” it said. Netanyahu said “today Israel has the ability to act against ballistic missiles that could be launched against us from Iran or anywhere else.”
ITALY
US teens arrested in murder
Two US teenagers who were classmates at a California high school spent a second night in a Rome jail on Saturday after they were interrogated for hours about their alleged roles in the murder of a policeman on Friday. Investigators on Saturday said in written statements that the pair had confessed to their roles in the grisly slaying. Authorities identified the two as Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, 18, and Finnegan Lee Elder, 19, and said they were born in San Francisco. Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, a member of the Carabinieri paramilitary corps, was stabbed eight times, allegedly by Elder, leaving him bleeding on a street close to the teens’ hotel near Rome’s Tiber River. The 35-year-old officer had just returned to duty a few days earlier from his honeymoon. Investigators said Cerciello Rega and another Carabinieri officer were in plainclothes when they confronted the Americans about 3am on Friday in the wake of a drug deal gone wrong.
MEXICO
Honduras job pact inked
A scheme to create 20,000 jobs in Honduras has been agreed between Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in an attempt to stem the flow of migrants toward the US. The two men met on Saturday in Veracruz to sign an agreement to extend a development program to Honduras, which includes a tree-planting scheme. Called “Sowing Life,” the scheme pays farmers a small monthly stipend to plant trees and crops. Mexico City signed a deal with El Salvador last month to introduce the same project there.
UNITED STATES
Minnie Mouse’s voice dies
Russi Taylor, Disney’s official voice of Minnie Mouse for more than three decades, has died, the company announced on Saturday. She was 75. “Minnie Mouse lost her voice with the passing of Russi Taylor,” Bob Iger, chairman and chief executive of The Walt Disney Co, said in a statement. “We take comfort in the knowledge that her work will continue to entertain and inspire for generations to come.” Taylor died in Glendale, California, on Friday, the company said. In 1991, she married Wayne Allwine, who had been the voice of Mickey Mouse since 1977. He died in 2009. Taylor was the voice of other Disney characters, as well as Strawberry Shortcake and Pebbles Flintstone.
UNITED STATES
Police, FBI hunt for toddler
The Medford Police Department in Oregon and the FBI are searching for a two-year-old boy whose parents were involved in an apparent murder-suicide in Montana. Aiden Salcido is the son of Daniel Salcido and Hannah Janiak, who were found dead on Wednesday in Kalispell, after police stopped them following a chase because they had felony burglary warrants for their arrest.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
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