GERMANY
Merkel receives top honors
Former chancellor Angela Merkel was yesterday to be decorated with the nation’s highest possible honor in recognition of her near-record 16 years at the helm. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was to bestow the Order of Merit for special achievement on the four-term chancellor, making her only the third former leader to receive that distinction. The other two were Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first leader, and Helmut Kohl, who led Germany to reunification. Merkel, 68, was the first woman to lead Germany and the first chancellor who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. She stepped down in December 2021 with a well-regarded record of leading Europe’s biggest economy through a series of crises, including the global financial crisis, the eurozone debt crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Merkel’s legacy has attracted increasingly critical scrutiny since her departure, largely because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She has staunchly defended her diplomatic efforts, saying that a much-criticized 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine bought Kyiv precious time.
UAE
Group frees more prisoners
A Saudi Arabian-led military coalition yesterday started freeing 104 more prisoners captured in Yemen’s war, a unilateral release that followed an organized prisoner swap amid renewed diplomatic efforts to halt the conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it flew 48 detainees from Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport heading to Sana’a, which has been held for years by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. More flights with prisoners were planned for later yesterday. A UN-brokered deal saw the release of more than 700 detained Houthis, and more than 180 other prisoners, including Saudi and Sudanese troops fighting with the Saudi-led coalition. That three-day operation was overseen by the Red Cross and ended on Sunday.
RUSSIA
Activist gets 25 years
A court in Moscow yesterday convicted an opposition activist on charges of treason and denigrating the military, and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr, who twice survived poisonings he blamed on the Kremlin, has been behind bars since his arrest a year ago. He has rejected the charges against him as political and likened the judicial proceedings against him to the show trials during Josef Stalin’s rule. The charges against Kara-Murza stem from his March 15 speech to the Arizona House of Representatives in which he denounced Russian military action in Ukraine. Investigators added the treason charges while he was in custody.
UNITED STATES
Jazz great dies at 92
Ahmad Jamal, a towering and influential jazz pianist, composer and band leader whose career spanned more than seven decades, died on Sunday at 92. Jamal’s widow, Laura Hess-Hey, confirmed his death, the Washington Post reported, while his daughter Sumayah Jamal told the New York Times the cause was prostate cancer. Music news outlets in France and Britain also reported his death. Jamal was friends with music greats such as Miles Davis, and influenced his work and that of other musicians, including the pianist McCoy Tyner. Born Frederick Russell Jones in Pittsburgh, Jamal won myriad awards over the course of his career, including France’s prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
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
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
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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