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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS