PHILIPPINES
Typoon forces evacuations
Thousands of people were yesterday evacuated from their homes in storm-battered parts of the nation as the third typhoon in as many weeks barreled toward the country. Typhoon Vamco was expected to graze Catanduanes Island before making landfall on Luzon later yesterday or early today. Destructive winds and torrential rain are expected in parts of central and southern Luzon, the state weather forecaster said. About 50,000 people living in the typhoon’s path would be ordered to leave their homes, said Gremil Alexis Naz, spokesman for the Office of Civil Defense in the Bicol region.
MYANMAR
Opposition disputes vote
A military-backed opposition party yesterday said that it would not recognize the results of Sunday’s general election and urged authorities to hold another vote. The Union Solidarity and Development Party told a news conference the vote was conducted unfairly and the party had asked the election commission for a re-run. The ruling National League for Democracy, led by Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, has established a clear lead in early results and the party has claimed victory overall, citing its own unofficial tally.
SOUTH KOREA
Spy boss suggests summit
National Intelligence Service Director Park Jie-won has proposed a summit of the leaders of the US, Japan and the two Koreas during the Tokyo Olympics next year, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported yesterday. Park made the proposal in Japan, where he arrived on Sunday for his first trip as head of the NIS aimed at improving relations strained by a feud over compensation for Koreans forced to work for Japanese firms during its colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. Park suggested the summit during a meeting on Tuesday with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, saying that it could take up the issues of North Korea’s denuclearisation and the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents, the newspaper said.
AUSTRALIA
Poppies light up opera house
Poppies yesterday illuminated the sails of the Sydney Opera House at dawn as the nation marked the 102nd anniversary of Remembrance Day. As the sun rose, a lone bugler played the Last Post to mark the end of World War I and to pay tribute to those who lost their lives in the line of duty. The guns fell silent at 11am on Nov. 11, 1918, after more than four years of war. Services were also held nationwide. Prime Minister Scott Morrison laid a wreath at a Remembrance Day service in Canberra.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Trump’ visible in Biden note
The government on Tuesday blamed a “technical error” for an embarrassing gaffe in which US President Donald Trump’s faded-out name appeared in a congratulatory online statement to US president-elect Joe Biden. Sharp-eyed Twitter users spotted the words “Trump,” “the future” and “second term” faintly hidden in the graphic posted on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official account to mark Biden’s election triumph. “As you’d expect, two statements were prepared in advance for the outcome of this closely contested election,” a Downing Street spokesman said. “A technical error meant that parts of the alternative message were embedded in the background of the graphic.”
HUNGARY
Gay adoption ban pursued
The government has drafted legislation that would practically ban adoption by same-sex couples in what rights groups have said is an attack on the LGBTQ community when COVID-19 means that they cannot protest. The bill was submitted late on Tuesday to parliament to shore up support for the government, just before tough COVID-19 restrictions took effect yesterday. “The timing is no coincidence: The proposals that severely limit legal rights and go against basic international and European human rights ... were submitted at a time when ... protests are not allowed,” the Hatter rights group said.
FRANCE
Ex-Vatican envoy on trial
Pope Francis’s former envoy to the nation on Tuesday went on trial in Paris for sexual assault following accusations that he groped five men during public ceremonies. Luigi Ventura, a 75-year-old Italian archbishop, was not in court for the proceedings, where the prosecution sought a 10-month suspended jail sentence. Ventura’s lawyer, Solange Doumic, said that his client’s doctor had advised him against traveling due to the health risks posed by COVID-19. The allegations against Ventura caused deep embarrassment for the Vatican when they surfaced in February last year. He was stripped of his diplomatic immunity in July last year so that he could be put on trial — a first for a Vatican envoy.
GERMANY
‘No proof’ against Thai king
The government has found no evidence that Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn has done anything illegal while living there, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur said, citing a Federal Foreign Office statement. Vajiralongkorn has spent most of his time over the past several years in the nation. Thousands of Thai protesters last month submitted a letter to the nation’s embassy in Bangkok, asking authorities to probe whether he has exercised royal authority during his time there, a breach of local law. “The German government has no reliable evidence that the Thai king has taken any such decisions during his stay,” the ministry said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Nude of feminist decried
A monument to feminist Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in London on Tuesday, prompting criticism from some who slammed the nude design. Wollstonecraft was an early feminist thinker whose 1792 book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman called for women to have equal rights. Artist Maggi Hambling created the sculpture of a small female nude figure. Some questioned whether a nude figure would have been used for a monument to a man. Hambling told the Evening Standard that she did not want to depict the writer in period clothing, as “she’s everywoman and clothes would have restricted her.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema