HUNGARY
Teachers, students protest
Thousands of teachers, students and parents protested in the capital on Saturday in solidarity with teachers fired from top Budapest secondary schools for taking strike action that the government deemed unlawful. Teachers have called for civil disobedience to demand higher wages, a solution to a deepening shortage of teachers and the right to strike. After a nationwide teachers’ strike in January, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s administration restricted strike action. Several teachers from three leading Budapest secondary schools were dismissed by an order from the Ministry of the Interior on Wednesday for joining demonstrations and not holding classes. Students held up banners “Hands off our teachers,” and “Shame on Orban” at the rally in Budapest.
HONDURAS
Rights to be suspended
The government on Saturday announced that it would suspend some constitutional rights in areas of two main cities controlled by criminal groups. The rights would be suspended under a national security emergency that would last for 30 days and be implemented from tomorrow in some of the poorest areas of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and the northern city of San Pedro Sula. “The partial state of exception will enter into force on Tuesday, December 6 at 6pm for 30 days, to promote the gradual activity of economic development, investment, commerce and in public spaces,” the country’s security secretariat said in a statement. The cities have been struggling with a so-called “war tax,” in which gangs offer protection or say that those who pay up would not be killed. The gangs have torched buses and killed drivers who did not pay the fee, prompting businesses and people to pay out of fear.
UNITED STATES
Movie home to be preserved
The listing agent for the Victorian home featured in the The Goonies film in Astoria, Oregon, last week said that the likely new owner is a fan of the classic coming-of-age movie about friendships and treasure hunting, and he promises to preserve and protect the landmark. The 1896 home with sweeping views of the Columbia River flowing into the Pacific Ocean was listed last month with an asking price of nearly US$1.7 million. Jordan Miller of John L. Scott Real Estate said the sale is expected to close in the middle of next month, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
UNITED STATES
Vaccine mandate to stay
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he wants to keep the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place to protect the health of the troops, as Republican governors and lawmakers press to rescind it. This past week more than 20 Republican governors sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking that the administration remove the mandate, saying it has hurt the National Guard’s ability to recruit troops. Those troops are activated by governors to respond to natural disasters or unrest. Congress might consider legislation this coming week to end the mandate as a requirement to gather enough support to pass this years’ defense budget, which is already two months late. Austin said he would not comment on pressure from Capitol Hill. “We lost a million people to this virus,” Austin told reporters traveling with him Saturday. “A million people died in the United States of America. We lost hundreds in DOD [the Department of Defense]. So this mandate has kept people healthy,” Austin added.
IRAN
Tehran executes four people
The government yesterday put to death four people accused of working with Israel’s intelligence service, the judiciary said. “This morning, the sentences of four main members of the gang of mobsters related to the Zionist intelligence service were executed,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online Web site reported. The government carried out the sentences four days after the Islamic republic’s supreme court upheld the penalty of capital punishment for “their intelligence cooperation with the Zionist regime and kidnapping,” the Mizan Online said. There was no recourse to appeal after Wednesday’s decision, it added. Mizan identified the men as Hossein Ordoukhanzadeh, Shahin Imani Mahmoudabad, Milad Ashrafi Atbatan and Manouchehr Shahbandi Bojandi, without elaborating on their backgrounds.
IRAN
New nuclear plant to be built
The government on Saturday began construction on a new nuclear power plant in the country’s southwest, state TV announced, amid tensions with the US over sweeping sanctions imposed after Washington pulled out of the Islamic republic’s nuclear deal with world powers. The new 300-megawatt plant, known as Karoon, is to take eight years to build and cost about US$2 billion, the country’s state television and radio agency reported. The plant is to be located in Khuzestan Province, near its western border with Iraq, it said.
ISRAEL
Thief sets off airport security
A Palestinian car thief yesterday rammed through a checkpoint on the way to Ben Gurion Airport, authorities said, setting off a security alert in what they described as the result of poor navigation on his part rather than an attempted attack. Video circulated on social media showed passengers in the departure terminal crouching alongside their luggage as instructions sounded over loudspeakers. Police said the suspect arrived at the airport checkpoint in a stolen vehicles and raced through toward the main terminal. During a brief pursuit, he was shot and arrested. It was at least the fifth such incident in recent months, an Israel Airports Authority spokesperson said. “It happens almost every week,” a police spokesperson said.
TURKEY
Court jails PKK member
A court on Saturday jailed a convicted member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) a day after Sweden extradited him, state media reported. Mahmut Tat was sentenced to more than six years in jail for being a member of the PKK. He fled to Sweden in 2015, but Stockholm rejected his asylum request. Tat arrived in Istanbul on Friday night after Sweden detained and extradited him, the Anadolu news agency reported. Turkish police arrested him soon after arriving at Istanbul airport and referred him to a court on Saturday, which sent him to jail, the news agency said. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland and Sweden in May dropped decades of military nonalignment and sought to join NATO. That requires a consensus within the US-led defense alliance, but Turkey and Hungary have so far not ratified their membership. Turkey has demanded the Nordic countries take a tougher stance on Kurdish groups it deems “terrorists” in exchange for its backing. Tat’s former lawyer in Sweden criticized the decision to extradite him. “It’s awful. It isn’t a matter just for him, it’s a question primarily for Swedish democracy and human rights,” Abdullah Deveci told Swedish news agency TT.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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