AZERBAIJAN
Protesters seek road access
Thousands rallied yesterday in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, demanding that Baku reopen the enclave’s sole land link with Armenia. About 6,000 people gathered at the central square of Karabakh’s main city, Stepanakert, after Baku closed the road to Armenia. “We ask to ensure unimpeded movement, transportation of people and cargo along the corridor connecting Artsakh with Armenia,” said Gurgen Nersisyan, a state minister in the separatist government said on Thursday, using the Armenian name for the region. “The situation is terrible, in a few days we will have irreversible consequences.”
JAPAN
Rocket engine explodes
A rocket engine exploded during a test yesterday, an official said, in the latest blow to the country’s space agency. The Epsilon S — an improved version of the Epsilon rocket that failed to launch in October last year — blew up “roughly 50 seconds after ignition,” Ministry of Science and Technology official Naoya Takegami told reporters. “So far we have received no reports of injuries” from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which was investigating the cause of the explosion, Takegami said.
CHINA
Former teacher executed
A former kindergarten teacher was executed in central China this week after killing one child and injuring 24 others by poisoning their porridge with sodium nitrite four years ago, state media reported yesterday. Wang Yun (王雲), 39, had unsuccessfully appealed the sentence, initially handed down in September 2020 by the Jiaozuo City Intermediate People’s Court in Henan Province. On Thursday, the same court verified Wang’s identity, escorted her to the execution ground and carried out the death sentence, a court statement said. In March 2019, Wang purchased sodium nitrite after being involved in a dispute with a fellow teacher. The next morning at the kindergarten she added some of the chemical compound into the children’s “eight treasures porridge,” the court said. In January 2020, one of the children died of multiple organ failure caused by the poisoning.
UNITED STATES
Man catches 6m python
A Florida man caught a nearly 6m Burmese python, believed to be a record for the state. Jake Waleri, 22, nabbed the snake on Monday at Big Cypress National Preserve while out hunting for the invasive species. Waleri is seen in a video grabbing the snake by the tail at the side of a road. The snake then lunges for Waleri and tries to bite him as he grabs it by the neck. They wrestle for a while on the ground, until a friend helps Waleri subdue the creature, which weighed 56.6kg. Waleri took the snake to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples. The organization measured and weighed the beast, and declared it a record for Florida. The state pays hunters to catch and kill such snakes to protect the local ecosystem.
UNITED STATES
Cocaine case closed
No fingerprints or DNA turned up on a baggie of cocaine found at the White House last week despite a FBI analysis, while surveillance footage of the area did not identify a suspect, a summary of a Secret Service investigation said. There were no leads on who brought the drugs into the building, it said. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered,” it said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS