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.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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