INDONESIA
Tourist reopening mulled
The government is reviewing a plan to reopen its tourist areas to foreign visitors amid concerns that such a move could compromise the country’s effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir said yesterday. Thohir, who is overseeing the daily operations of the country’s coronavirus task force, was responding to a question if the government would go ahead with a plan to reopen Bali, the country’s most popular tourist spot, on Sept. 11 as scheduled. “We don’t want that the program to make Indonesia healthy becomes compromised by the plan to allow foreign tourists to come, and it creates possible new clusters,” Thohir said in an online discussion. “Therefore, the committee has decided to review this plan to allow foreign tourists to come.”
LITHUANIA
Baltic nations press Belarus
The prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania yesterday called on Belarus to conduct new “free and fair” elections as protests swelled against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed poll victory. A new vote should be held “in a transparent way with the participation of international observers,” the leaders said in a joint statement after meeting in Estonia. They urged Belarus to refrain from violence and release political prisoners and detained protesters. They also called for EU sanctions on those responsible for violence.
AFGHANISTAN
Negotiator escapes assault
A member of the country’s peace negotiating team and a former lawmaker survived an assassination attempt, officials said yesterday. Fawzia Koofi was attacked late on Friday afternoon near the capital, Kabul, as she was returning from a visit to the northern province of Parwan, Ministry of the Interior spokesman Tariq Arian said. Koofi is part of a 21-member team charged with representing the government in upcoming peace talks with the Taliban, following a US deal with the militants that was struck in February. The head of the peace delegation, Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, tweeted that Koofi had survived the attack and was “in good health.”
MEXICO
Baby elephant named Zoom
A baby African elephant whose birth was live-streamed by a safari park in the country has been named Zoom after the video chat app made popular by the COVID-19 pandemic. The calf is the sixth born at the park in Puebla, southeast of the capital, to a herd of elephants rescued eight years ago in Namibia, where they were threatened by poachers. “The birth of an elephant is difficult to see,” said Frank Carlos Camacho, director of Africam Safari, where the baby elephant was seen on Friday playing between its mother’s legs. The park said its goal is for the elephants to eventually return to Africa. “They’re not ours. They belong to the world,” Camacho said.
UNITED STATES
Sea lions to be culled
Authorities on Friday gave wildlife managers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho permission to start killing hundreds of sea lions in the Columbia River basin in hopes of helping struggling salmon and steelhead trout. The permit allows the states and several Native American tribes to kill 540 California sea lions and 176 Steller sea lions over the next five years along a 290km stretch of the Columbia, from Portland, Oregon, to the McNary Dam upriver, as well as in several tributaries.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS