CHINA
Xi to visit Vietnam
President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit neighboring Vietnam next week to push for deeper ties between the socialist neighbors, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday. Xi’s state visit is to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said in a statement. The Chinese president was invited by Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Vo Van Thuong, she added. Vietnam, which fought a war with China from 1979 to 1988, is wary of its northern neighbor, and is one of a handful of countries with claims on the many islets and outcrops that dot the South China Sea.
UNITED STATES
Senator’s son kills officer
The 42-year-old son of US Senator Kevin Cramer was being chased by police when he crashed into a North Dakota sheriff’s vehicle, killing a sheriff’s deputy who was outside of the vehicle and laying down road spikes, authorities and the senator’s family said. Ian Cramer, of Bismarck, was driven by his mother to a hospital at about 4:30pm on Wednesday over concerns about his mental health, Bismarck police said. When she got out of the family SUV, Ian Cramer took the wheel and drove through a door to get out of the enclosed ambulance bay at the hospital’s emergency department. More than an hour later, a deputy in neighboring Mercer County spotted Cramer. The North Dakota Highway Patrol said in a news release that a chase began and the SUV crashed into a Mercer County sheriff’s vehicle that was parked along a state highway. A deputy was standing behind the parked vehicle and preparing to deploy a tire deflation device to end the chase. The impact of the crash pushed the parked vehicle into the deputy, killing him. Ian Cramer was evaluated at a hospital and then jailed.
UNITED STATES
Musk slams Disney CEO
X CEO Elon Musk lashed out publicly for a second time at Walt Disney Co CEO Bob Iger, escalating criticism over the entertainment company’s decision to join an advertising boycott of his social media platform. “Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company,” Musk said on X, the social media service that he owns. Musk also said Iger “should be fired immediately.” The comments come after Disney, along with other companies, paused their ad spending on X, formerly Twitter, following Musk’s endorsement of anti-Semitic remarks on the site. Disney was one of the largest advertisers on X.
FRANCE
Two held for bedbug scam
French police on Thursday said they had arrested two men for fraud after they sold bedbug pest control services to elderly people who did not need them, charging them hefty sums for the service. The two men telephoned people, usually women older than 90, telling them there had been a bedbug infestation in their neighborhood. They gained access to their targets’ homes passing themselves off as health officials. They then pretended to inoculate the space against bedbugs with an aerosol. They also provided an ointment they said would keep the bugs away from human skin, which was in fact a simple eucalyptus-scented cream. Accepting only credit card payments, they charged 300 to 2,100 euros (US$324 to US$2,265) per visit. Once alerted, police identified the suspects, put them on surveillance and arrested them as they were leaving the home of their latest victim in Strasbourg, eastern France.
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
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