NEW ZEALAND
Coalition to take ‘two weeks’
New Zealand First Party leader Winston Peters said that talks to form a new government can be concluded within two weeks. “I certainly think that we will have it resolved before the next two weeks, most definitely,” Peters told NBR, a business news firm, according to an audio recording posted on its Web site yesterday. Official election results released last week showed the National Party and its ally the ACT Party failed to secure a majority in parliament between them, and now need support from Peters.
ITALY
Sick child given citizenship
An eight-month-old British girl was granted Italian citizenship on Monday after a court in Britain upheld rulings authorizing the withdrawal of life support. Indi Gregory’s family hopes that Rome’s decision would help their fight to allow her to be transferred to Italy. A judge last week ruled that the child could not be moved to Italy. The Vatican’s pediatric hospital, Bambino Gesu, in Rome has offered to care for Gregory and the government said that it would pay for any treatment “that is deemed necessary.” The Cabinet met on Monday to grant the child citizenship. “They say there isn’t much hope for little Indi, but until the very end, I’ll do what I can to defend her life,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on Facebook. “And to defend the right of her mamma and papa to do all that they can for her.” Gregory has a metabolic disorder known as mitochondrial disease, which means her cells are not able to produce enough energy to operate properly.
UNITED STATES
Reporter’s citations dropped
Officials in a suburban Chicago community on Monday dropped municipal citations against a local news reporter for what they said were persistent contacts with city officials seeking comment on fall flooding. The reversal occurred days after officials in Calumet City mailed several citations to Hank Sanders, a Daily Southtown reporter, the Chicago Tribune reported. The tickets from the city of 35,000 had alleged “interference/hampering of city employees” by Sanders. The Southtown on Oct. 20 published a report by Sanders that said consultants had informed Calumet officials that the city’s stormwater facilities were in poor condition before heavy rain in September caused flooding. Tribune executive editor Mitch Pugh said that the newspaper is “glad that cooler heads prevailed and Calumet City officials understood the error of their ways and dismissed these charges.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Protesters target painting
Two climate change protesters were arrested on Monday after they smashed a protective glass panel covering a Diego Velazquez oil painting at London’s National Gallery, police said on Monday. The two members of the group Just Stop Oil targeted Velazquez’s The Toilet of Venus, also known as The Rokeby Venus, with small hammers. Photographs showed the protective glass panel punctured with several holes. Just Stop Oil said the action was to demand that the government immediately halt all licensing for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK. The group said that the two targeted Velazquez’s 17th-century oil painting because it was previously slashed as part of the suffragette movement calling for women’s rights in 1914. Just Stop Oil said the protesters hammered the glass panel, then told people at the gallery: “Women did not get the vote by voting. It is time for deeds, not words.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home