COLOMBIA
Ceasefire suspended
President Gustavo Petro on Sunday suspended a ceasefire with one of a handful of armed groups with which he hoped to negotiate peace accords, saying its fighters violated the truce by attacking an indigenous community. The government said that starting tomorrow, it would resume military operations against Estado Mayor Central, a group of fighters who broke away from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia when it signed a peace pact in 2016. Indigenous leaders in the war-torn western region of Cauca said an attack by the dissident group on Saturday wounded at least three people and a young student was taken away by force.
MALAYSIA
Google sorry over ringgit
Google Malaysia yesterday apologized for misquoting the ringgit’s exchange rate, after the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) called out its error, saying the tech giant had undervalued the currency against the US dollar. The ringgit, which fell to a 26-year low last month, has weakened about 2.44 percent. The central bank has said the currency is undervalued and does not reflect the nation’s positive economic fundamentals. “We immediately contacted the third party that provides USD-MYR exchange rate information to correct the error,” Google Malaysia said on X. BNM said in a statement on Saturday that Google published “inaccurate” information on Friday and had also done so on Feb. 6.
CHINA
More Chinese tie the knot
The number of new marriages jumped 12.4 percent last year from a year earlier, reversing a downtrend that has lasted for almost a decade as more young people tied the knot after delaying their nuptials due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of newlyweds rose to 7.68 million last year, Ministry of Civil Affairs data released last week showed. This was up 845,000 couples from 2022, but still far below the peak of 13.47 million couples in 2013. Premier Li Qiang (李強) earlier this month pledged that the government would work toward “a birth-friendly society and promote long-term, balanced population development,” as well as reducing the cost of childbirth, parenting and education. The nation’s population fell for a second consecutive year last year, as the record low birth rate and deaths due to COVID-19 accelerated a downturn that officials fear would have profound long-term effects on the economy.
NEW ZEALAND
Kiwis ‘take to the skies’
A flock of flightless kiwi birds yesterday briefly took to the skies, carried across the country in chartered planes on a special conservation mission. The ground-dwelling kiwi is one of the country’s beloved national icons, but it is also one of its most vulnerable native birds. Conservationists have embarked on an ambitious project to restore kiwi populations to the forested hills that surround the capital, Wellington. As part of the project, a flock of 15 kiwis were yesterday coaxed from a sanctuary in the north, then flown more than 500km in two light planes to their new home. Calling it a “milestone moment,” project leader Paul Ward said: “I never thought we would see kiwi fly.” The bird vanished from Wellington’s hills about 150 years ago, as predators were introduced and land was cleared for the growing city. The kiwi transfer was the first by air, but the project has been releasing adult birds around Wellington since 2022. Ward estimates about 75 kiwis now live around Wellington, a figure he hopes to double by May.
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system. The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph. However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b. Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun. The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind
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