HONG KONG
Cardinal meets Pope Francis
A 90-year-old Hong Kong cardinal who has criticized the Vatican’s dealings with China received a private audience with Pope Francis on Friday, the Jesuit-run America Magazine said. Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen (陳日君), one of Asia’s highest-ranking Catholics, is being investigated under Hong Kong’s National Security Law after his arrest last year over a fund that helped pro-democracy protesters. Zen was at the Holy See to attend the funeral of pope Benedict XVI, a trip that required special court permission. Zen has accused the Vatican in recent years of “selling out” China’s underground Catholic community after Pope Francis sought to improve ties with Beijing. Zen thanked Francis for appointing Jesuit Stephen Chow (周守仁) in 2021 to lead Hong Kong’s Catholic diocese, giving the city “a good bishop,” the magazine reported.
JAPAN
Bomb threat aborts flight
A Jetstar flight made an emergency landing at Chubu Centrair International Airport in central Japan yesterday due to a bomb threat, but no device was found, officials said. The runway at the airport was closed after the flight from Narita International Airport near Tokyo, bound for Fukuoka in southern Japan, landed at 7:41am, but resumed operations at 12:15pm after safety was confirmed, a spokesman said. Five people sustained minor injuries while evacuating from the plane, a Chubu airport official said. No explosives or other suspicious objects were found in a search of the cabin and luggage, the official said. The airport in Narita received a call from Germany saying in English that a 100kg plastic bomb was in the cargo compartment of the aircraft, NHK reported.
SOUTH SUDAN
Journalists held over footage
A journalists’ union on Friday said that six staffers with the national broadcaster were detained in connection with footage allegedly showing the country’s president urinating in his pants during an event. The South Sudan Broadcasting Corp footage aired last month and was widely shared online. It showed 71-year-old President Salva Kiir standing during the national anthem and then looking down at what appeared to be a spreading stain before the camera turned away. The Union of Journalists of South Sudan in a statement called for a expedited conclusion to the investigation into the staffers who it said are in the custody of the National Security Service. The staffers are suspected of having knowledge of how “a certain footage” was released, the statement said.
ARGENTINA
Turtles returned to ocean
Marine biologists in Argentina have returned to the ocean two green turtles that were rescued after they became entangled in fishing nets, with one of the pair of endangered creatures excreting plastic ingested from the sea. The turtles spent a month in animal rehabilitation at Fundacion Mundo Marino, where scientists helped them recover from ingesting the plastics. They were returned to the sea on the beaches of San Clemente. “We fed them algae and one of them began to defecate plastic. Luckily, it wasn’t too much. About 96 percent of the turtles that enter the center defecate plastic,” said Vanesa Traverso, a biologist at the foundation. The green sea turtles, classified as endangered, underwent blood tests and X-rays to check their digestive tracts and lungs. Previous turtles treated at the center had excreted up to 22g of garbage.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion