NORWAY
Nobel lifts Russia ban
Ambassadors from Russia and Belarus have been invited again to Stockholm’s Nobel Prize banquet this year after being left out last year because of the Ukraine invasion, the Nobel Foundation said on Thursday. Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, was also invited to the event for the first time. The foundation said that ambassadors from all countries that are diplomatically represented in Sweden and Norway would be invited to the prize award ceremonies in December. It said it sought to include even those who did not share the values of the Nobel Prize to promote dialogue and understanding. Akesson said he would not attend. “Unfortunately I’m busy that day,” he wrote on Facebook.
UNITED STATES
US, China officials meet
US and Chinese military officials met at a defense chiefs conference in Fiji last month, in a rare direct engagement between the armed forces of the two superpowers. US Admiral John Aquilino, who leads the US Indo-Pacific Command, held a meeting with a senior Chinese official at the event held from Aug. 14 to 16, the Pentagon said. Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Wu Qian (吳謙) told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that General Xu Qiling (徐起零), deputy joint chief of staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, met US representatives there. Neither side gave further details on the discussions.
GEORGIA
President under fire over EU
The ruling Georgian Dream party yesterday said that it would begin impeachment proceedings against the president due to her visits to the EU, which were made against the will of the government, news agency Interpress reported. President Salome Zourabichvili had “flagrantly violated” the country’s constitution, Interpress cited Georgian Dream party leader Irakli Kobakhidze as saying, adding that the party would begin impeachment proceedings. Kobakhidze said the impeachment is unlikely to succeed, as Georgian Dream, which has a simple majority in parliament, would need the support of the opposition for it to pass. Zourabichvili, a former French diplomat of Georgian descent, was elected to the nation’s mostly ceremonial presidency in 2018 with Georgian Dream’s backing. She has since broken with the party, which she has repeatedly accused of being pro-Russian and insufficiently committed to the nation joining the EU and NATO.
SRI LANKA
Piano-playing cop fired
The nation’s police force yesterday said it had sacked an officer who had entertained protesters with an impromptu piano performance after they stormed the presidential compound last year. Constable R. M. D. Dayaratne was deployed to help protect the colonial-era residence on the day it was taken over by protesters who forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. Instead, he sat at a grand piano in the compound and played a song to the crowd streaming through its rooms. “Dayaratne was on social media playing the piano while the building was being vandalized,” a senior officer said on condition of anonymity. “He was our Nero,” the officer added, referring to the ancient Roman emperor said to have played the fiddle while the city burned in a weeklong fire. Police authorities concluded that the constable had breached discipline after a lengthy investigation.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
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