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.”
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
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