CHINA
No emerging illness: official
A surge in respiratory illness is caused by known pathogens and there is no sign of new infectious diseases, a health official said yesterday as the country faces its first full winter since lifting strict COVID-19 restrictions. The spike in illness attracted attention when the WHO sought information last week, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children. Authorities are to open more pediatric outpatient clinics, seek to ensure more elderly people and children receive flu vaccines and encourage people to wear masks and wash their hands, National Health Commission official Mi Feng (米鋒) told a news conference.
PHILIPPINES
Troops kill 11 militants
Troops, backed by airstrikes and artillery fire, killed 11 suspected Islamic militants near a hinterland village in the south, authorities said yesterday, in one of the military’s bloodiest anti-insurgency offensives this year. The military launched the offensive on Friday after receiving intelligence about the whereabouts of suspected leaders and armed followers of the Dawla Islamiyah and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters groups near Tuwayan in Maguindanao province, military officials said.
UNITED STATES
Trump immunity rejected
Former president Donald Trump is not entitled to absolute presidential immunity against criminal charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge ruled, saying the office does not come with a “lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.” US District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday rejected Trump’s early efforts to get the federal indictment against him in Washington tossed out, including his contention that he could not be prosecuted over actions he took after the 2020 election while he was president. Trump’s “four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” the judge wrote. The decision came hours after the US Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia Circuit rejected Trump’s effort to claim presidential immunity against civil claims seeking to hold him responsible for the violence at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
JAPAN
Officials worry over Ospreys
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno on Friday expressed concern that the US military is continuing to fly Osprey aircraft in the country without providing adequate information about Wednesday’s fatal crash near Yakushima Island, in which one crew member was killed and seven others remain missing. “We are concerned about the continuing Osprey flights despite our repeated requests and the absence of a sufficient explanation about their safety” from the US military, Matsuno said.
NICARAGUA
Pageant head faces charges
The director of the national beauty pageant was accused of “treason” on Friday, after a woman seen as a symbol of opposition to the government was crowned Miss Universe. A police statement said that Karen Celebertti, her husband and her son — all owners of the Miss Nicaragua pageant — had participated “in the terrorist actions of the failed coup attempt,” a reference to the 2018 mass protests against President Daniel Ortega. Sheynnis Palacios, 23, has been widely portrayed as a symbol of opposition to the longtime president since she was crowned as the first Miss Universe from Nicaragua last month.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
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