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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion