BELARUS
Military starts snap drills
The armed forces yesterday began sudden large-scale drills to test their combat readiness, the Ministry of Defense said. “It is planned that the [combat readiness] test will involve the movement of significant numbers of military vehicles, which can slow down traffic on public roads,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that the exercise posed no threat to the nation’s neighbors or the European community in general. President Alexander Lukashenko spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and the two discussed the Russian operation in Ukraine, among other issues, official statements said.
COSTA RICA
Chaves rejects Escazu treaty
President-elect Rodrigo Chaves on Tuesday said that his government would not ratify the Escazu Agreement that establishes protection for environmentalists. The treaty was the first in the world to contain specific measures to protect the human rights of environmental defenders and the Central American nation had been the driving force behind it. Outgoing President Carlos Alvarado had asked lawmakers to ratify the agreement, but Chaves said the treaty was unnecessary and could harm the economy. “The private sector should be reassured that the Escazu Agreement is not on the government’s agenda,” the former World Bank official told a news conference. “I don’t think it would be beneficial for the country.” Chaves is to take office on Sunday. The treaty has been signed by 24 countries and ratified by half of them, which guarantees its validity, despite San Jose’s likely non-ratification.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Envoy disappears in Haiti
The government on Tuesday reinforced surveillance on the border with Haiti and announced an urgent search for one of its diplomats who disappeared there a few days ago. Major General Julio Ernesto Florian, general commander of the army, told media that the military would use drones and intelligence personnel to find information on the whereabouts of Carlos Guillen, a commercial attache for agricultural affairs at the Dominican embassy in Port-au-Prince. Guillen has been missing since Friday when he was driving from the Haitian capital to the Dominican border town of Jimani. Ambassador to Haiti Faruk Miguel Castillo said in a statement that he had requested the Haitian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to carry out an investigation into Guillen’s whereabouts. Castillo added that he had filed a complaint with the Haitian judicial police and provided records of the last calls from Guillen’s telephone.
ARMENIA
Protesters call on PM to quit
Protesters calling for the resignation of President Nikol Pashinyan yesterday blocked major roads in Yerevan and called on citizens to commit acts of civil disobedience. Footage from local television showed protesters blocking Yerevan’s Kievian Bridge over the Hrazdan River, chanting “Armenia without Nikol.” Traffic on the bridge has since resumed, a Reuters witness said. Pashinyan has faced heavy criticism since he agreed in November 2020 to a Russian-brokered ceasefire to end six weeks of war between ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The deal that ended the heaviest fighting in the region since the 1990s secured significant territorial gains for Azerbaijan in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinyan said he had been compelled to accept the deal, which prompted a wave of protests, to avoid greater human and territorial losses.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
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