GERMANY
Four killed in clinic attack
Four people have been killed and one person seriously wounded in an attack at a care clinic, police said yesterday. Officers said the victims were subjected to “intense, extreme violence,” but did not give any details around the circumstances of the killings in the eastern city of Potsdam. A 51-year-old employee has been arrested “under strong suspicion” of carrying out the assault, police said. The motivation for the attack is not known, they added. Those killed are believed to be patients at the clinic, local newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten reported. Brandenburg state police were called to the Oberlin Clinic at around 9pm on Wednesday, with the victims later discovered in their rooms, according to reports. Police have also imposed a news blackout. The clinic specializes in helping people with disabilities, offering live-in care. The site includes housing, schools, and workshops.
CHINA
Two children killed in attack
Two children were on Wednesday killed and 16 injured by a knife-wielding attacker at a kindergarten in a township outside Beiliu in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Xinhua news agency said. A suspect has been arrested and an investigation is underway, it said, adding that two of the injured were being treated for serious injuries. It was unclear if the injured were children or adults. Numerous such attacks, usually perpetrated by people who were described as mentally or emotionally disturbed or who bore grudges against the owners of such facilities, have occurred in the past. Experts say the country lacks sufficient capacity to diagnose and treat people with such conditions.
CHINA
Collision causes oil spill
About 400 tonnes of oil has spilled into the Yellow Sea after a tanker on Tuesday collided with another ship off the country’s largest crude-receiving port, maritime authorities said yesterday. “The amount of oil spilled from the ship into the sea is about 400 tonnes, and the emergency disposal work is being carried out in an orderly manner,” the Shandong Maritime Safety Administration wrote in a social media post. “The collision incident has had no impact on ships entering and leaving Qingdao port.” It added that 12 decontamination vessels were deployed to clean up the oil spill about 40 nautical miles (75km) offshore from Qingdao port. Panamanian bulk carrier Sea Justice struck the Liberian oil tanker A Symphony near Qingdao, causing the tanker to lose “a quantity of oil,” according to a previous statement from vessel manager Goodwood Ship Management.
FRANCE
Officers face sanctions
Eighteen French soldiers, including four officers, who signed an open letter warning about the risk of “civil war,” face sanctions before a military council, the armed forces chief of staff said on Wednesday. “Each one [would go] before a senior military council,” Chief of Staff General Francois Lecointre told the daily Le Parisian, and could be “delisted” or “put into immediate retirement.” The open letter, published last week by right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles, predicted that failure to act against “suburban hordes” — or residents of mainly immigrant suburban areas — and other groups who “scorn our country” would lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands.” The 18 soldiers were among hundreds of signatories to the open letter.
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