POLAND
EU-critical ruling welcomed
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki yesterday welcomed a court ruling that said parts of EU treaties are incompatible with the constitution. The ruling, announced on Thursday, challenges a pillar of European integration, with the European Commission saying that it raised serious concerns. The Law and Justice party-led government is embroiled in a dispute with Brussels over the independence of courts, media freedoms and LGBT rights. “We want a community of respect and not a grouping of those who are equal and more equal. This is our community, our Union,” he wrote on Facebook post, referring to the EU.
CZECH REPUBLIC
PM’s re-election bid wanes
Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ party is poised to win legislative elections held yesterday and today, although he is expected to fall short of a majority after a series of scandals. Outrage over one of the world’s highest COVID-19 death tolls per capita, accusations of defrauding EU funds and revelations from the Pandora Papers about offshore deals have turned Babis into a political pariah and most political parties, except for on the far right and far left, have rejected the idea of forming a coalition with him. “It’s the last chance to vote for Babis, the last chance to protect our national interests, our living standards, our culture and our independence,” Babis told a campaign rally last month.
INDIA
Tourist arrivals to resume
The country is to reopen for tourists from Friday next week after being closed for more than a year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the government said on Thursday. The country in March last year suspended all visas for foreigners. “After considering various inputs, the MHA [Ministry of Home Affairs] has decided to begin granting fresh tourist visas for foreigners coming to India through chartered flights with effect from October 15, 2021,” the ministry said in a statement. “Foreign tourists entering into India by flights other than chartered aircraft would be able to do so only with effect from November 15, 2021 on fresh Tourist Visas,” it added. At the peak of the country’s most recent COVID-19 wave in May, it recorded about 400,000 cases and 4,000 deaths per day.
NIGERIA
Kidnap victims freed
Security forces have rescued nearly 200 kidnapping victims during raids on camps of criminal gangs in dense forests in the country’s northwest, police said on Thursday. Armed gangs have plagued the area for years, raiding and looting villages and abducting for ransom, but violence has surged over the past year. “The abducted victims who spent many weeks in captivity were unconditionally rescued following extensive search and rescue operations that lasted for hours,” Zamfara State police spokesman Mohammed Shehu said in a statement.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Sailors rescued after 29 days
Two Solomon Islanders who spent 29 days lost at sea after their GPS tracker stopped working have been rescued off Papua New Guinea — 400km from where their journey began. Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni on Sept. 3 set out from Mono Island, in their country’s Western Province. They planned to travel 200km in their small motor boat to New Georgia Island. “We have done the trip before and it should have been OK,” Nanjikana said, adding that after the GPS stopped working, “we didn’t know where we were, but did not expect to be in another country.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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