RUSSIA
Moscow offers Armenia help
Moscow yesterday said that it would provide “necessary” assistance to Yerevan in its conflict with Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh if fighting reached Armenia’s territory. “Russia will render Yerevan all necessary assistance if clashes take place directly on the territory of Armenia,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, calling on the warring sides to immediately halt fire. Earlier yesterday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan asked President Vladimir Putin to begin “urgent” consultations on security assistance.
MADAGASCAR
Chameleon rediscovered
Scientists say they have found an elusive chameleon species that was last spotted in the island nation 100 years ago. Researchers from Madagascar and Germany on Friday said that they discovered several living specimens of Voeltzkow’s chameleon during an expedition to the northwest of the nation. Researchers believe that the reptiles only live during the rainy season, dying during a few short months. Researchers said the female of the species, which had never previously been documented, displayed particularly colorful patterns during pregnancy, when encountering males and when stressed.
FRANCE
Second lockdown begins
The country’s 65 million people on Friday woke to a new lockdown, largely confined to their homes and needing written statements to leave, as Europe passed 10 million COVID-19 infections. Some medics voiced fears that steady traffic and appreciable numbers of people on public transport in Paris showed the public was not taking the lockdown as seriously a second time round. Official figures showed that the country recorded 49,215 new cases in 24 hours.
FRANCE
Paris stands firm after attack
Mourners on Friday lit candles and prayed to honor three people killed in a knife attack at the Notre Dame Basilica in the city of Nice. The Tunisian attacker was hospitalized with life-threatening wounds, and investigators are looking into his motives. From Pakistan to Russia and Lebanon, Muslims held more protests to show their anger at caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that were recently republished in a French newspaper, as well as at President Emmanuel Macron’s staunch defense of that decision. Macron’s government stood firm, and called up thousands of reserve soldiers to protect France and reinforce security at French sites abroad.
UNITED STATES
Judge halts TikTok ban
A US federal judge on Friday issued an injunction temporarily blocking an executive order by President Donald Trump aimed at banning TikTok, throwing up a legal roadblock ahead of a Nov. 12 deadline, which would have knocked the Chinese-owned video-sharing app offline.
UNITED STATES
Woman votes while in labor
A pregnant Florida woman did not let labor stop her from casting her vote in the presidential election. Officials with the Orange County Supervisor of Elections said that the woman was already in labor when she arrived at the polling site with her husband on Tuesday afternoon, news outlets reported. Elections employee Karen Briceno Gonzalez said the husband asked for a ballot for his wife as she was refusing to go to the hospital until she was able to vote. While doing some controlled Lamaze breathing, she filled the ballot out on the spot.
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
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
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
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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