FRANCE
Afghan women evacuated
Five Afghan women who had been “threatened by the Taliban” had been flown to Paris, where they were due to arrive yesterday, French Office for Immigration and Integration Director-General Didier Leschi said. By presidential order, “special attention is being paid to women who are primarily threatened by the Taliban, because they have held important positions in Afghan society ... or have close contacts with Westerners,” Leschi said. The women include a former university director, a former non-governmental organization consultant, a former television presenter and a teacher at a secret school in Kabul. One of the women was accompanied by three children. The women had been unable to leave Afghanistan on airlifts to Western countries when the Taliban returned to power in 2021. They fled to Pakistan where they sought temporary refuge. From there, the French authorities organized their evacuation, Leschi said.
JAPAN
Fukushima fishers to sue
About 100 fishers and locals living near Fukushima are to file a lawsuit on Friday seeking to stop the release of wastewater from the stricken Fukishima Da-ichi nuclear power plant, they said yesterday. The government on Aug. 24 began releasing treated cooling water from the facility into the Pacific Ocean. Many Japanese fishers have been against the release, fearing that it would undo years of efforts to improve the industry’s image in the wake of the 2011 catastrophe. More than 100 plaintiffs, including fishers in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures, are to file the lawsuit in the Fukushima District Court, said Sugie Tanji, a member of the group’s secretariat.
PAKISTAN
Mob attack had phony start
Last month’s mob attacks on churches and homes of Christians in the city of Jaranwala erupted after three Christians threw pages of the Koran outside the house of two others to falsely implicate them in a blasphemy case due to a personal dispute, police said yesterday. The three detained suspects confessed to conspiring and throwing the pages outside Raja Amir’s house on Aug. 16, three police officials said. Amir and his brother had been arrested after they were accused by Muslims of desecrating the Koran. The suspected mastermind was Pervez Kodu, who thought Amir had an affair with his wife and knew Muslims would target Amir if they thought he had desecrated the holy book, three police officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. The three now face charges of causing violence and falsely implicating Amir and his brother in a blasphemy case.
SWEDEN
Clashes erupt over Koran
Clashes erupted in an immigrant neighborhood in the nation’s third-largest city after an anti-Muslim protester set fire to the Koran, police in Malmo said yesterday. Officers said they were pelted with rocks and dozens of cars were set on fire, including in an underground garage, describing the events that started on Sunday and lasted overnight as “a violent riot.” The clashes started after anti-Islam activist Salwan Momika burned a copy of the Koran and an angry mob tried to stop him while police, some of them helmeted, detained several people. At least three people have been detained, police said. Early yesterday, an angry crowd of mainly young people also set fire to tires and debris, and some were seen throwing electric scooters, bikes and barriers in Malmo’s Rosengard neighborhood, which has seen similar clashes in the past.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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,
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