EUROPEAN UNION
Orban under scrutiny
EU foreign ministers are to evaluate how to respond to trips by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Russia and China, and his country’s positioning over the EU’s role in Ukraine, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said yesterday. Hungary this month took over the six-month rotating presidency of the bloc, and Orban almost immediately went to Moscow and Beijing in what was described as a “peace mission,” despite none of his EU partners being aware, or mandating him to do so. He also left a NATO summit early to meet former US president Donald Trump. “We will discuss what has happened and positions taken by the Hungarian government,” Borrell said, describing them as “unacceptable.” Some member states would like the bloc to show a tougher stance on Budapest. Among the ideas would be to boycott or downgrade the attendance of ministers at an informal meeting in Budapest next month.
PAKISTAN
Frankfurt protest slammed
The government has lodged a strong protest with Germany over its failure to prevent protesters getting into the grounds of the Pakistani consulate in Frankfurt, demanding action against “a gang of extremists” that it says breached security and endangered the lives of its staff. It was unclear what prompted the demonstrators to hold Saturday’s protest outside the building. Pakistan has not identified those involved in the protest, but some of the demonstrators were carrying the tricolor flags of Afghanistan. Videos circulating on social media showed a protester taking down the Pakistani flag. Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar said on X that Pakistan has urged Germany to take immediate measures to arrest and prosecute those involved in the incident. Frankfurt police said in a statement that an investigation was under way and officers were in contact with the Pakistani consulate.
CHINA
Retirement age to rise
The nation is to gradually raise its statutory retirement age to allow people to work longer, as it struggles to relieve soaring pressure on pension budgets, with many provinces already facing deficits. The reform is urgent, with life expectancy having risen to 78 years in 2021, from about 44 years in 1960, and projected to exceed 80 years by 2050. Sunday’s announcement came in a key policy document that also rolled out plans to sharpen a strategy to combat a declining birthrate and an aging population that fell for a second straight year last year, and is seen falling for decades. The retirement age is now 60 for men, while for women in white-collar work it is 55, and 50 for women who work in factories.
UNITED KINGDOM
Artist swaps museum coin
A Brazilian conceptual artist swapped a historic British coin for a fake in the British Museum to highlight the large number of foreign objects it holds. Ile Sartuzi said the idea came to him when he saw a museum volunteer handing visitors coins to handle. He asked for an English Civil War-era silver coin, because “it is one of the few British things in the British Museum” and then created a diversion while he swapped it for the fake. Sartuzi told Reuters he deposited the original coin in the museum’s collection box on the way out. The Art Newspaper first reported his act, which he recounted in a video made for his master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. The British Museum said it would inform police about the incident, which took place last month.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits
‘RADICAL LEFT LUNATIC’: Trump earlier criticized Kamala Harris, his new opponent, calling her ‘the ultra-liberal driving force behind every single Biden catastrophe’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on voters to defend the country’s democracy as he explained his decision to drop his bid for re-election and throw his support behind US Vice President Kamala Harris. As “the defense of democracy is more important than any title,” Biden said that he was stepping aside to deliver an implicit repudiation of former US president Donald Trump in his first public address since his announcement on Sunday that he would not be the Democratic candidate. He did not name Trump, whom he has called an existential threat to democracy. “Nothing, nothing can come in the