RUSSIA
Over 30,000 evacuated
Commissioner for Human Rights of Russia Tatyana Moskalkova yesterday said that 30,415 people, including nearly 8,000 children, have been evacuated from areas bordering Ukraine due to shelling and attacks. Moskalkova told news outlet Argumenty I Fakty in an interview that the evacuees have been placed in nearly 1,000 temporary accommodation centers across the nation. Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region in August, taking control of dozens of settlements and holding most positions since. Moskalkova said she had received appeals regarding more than 1,000 Russian citizens from Kursk, whose whereabouts are unknown and who were said to have been taken by Ukrainian forces. Reuters could not independently verify Moskalkova’s reports. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
AFGHANISTAN
Image ban to be enforced
The Taliban yesterday pledged to implement a law banning news media from publishing images of all living things, with journalists told the rule would be gradually enforced. “The law applies to all Afghanistan... and it will be implemented gradually” by persuading people images of living things are against Islamic law, Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice spokesman Saiful Islam Khyber said. The Taliban government judiciary recently announced legislation formalizing their strict interpretations of Islamic law imposed by the authorities since they swept to power in 2021. The law detailed several rules for news media, including banning the publication of images of all living things and ordering outlets not to mock or humiliate Islam, or contradict Islamic law. Television and pictures of living things were banned under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been broadly imposed since their return to power.
MEXICO
Five beheaded bodies found
Authorities on Sunday said they had found the bodies of five decapitated men on a road in western Jalisco state, the latest grisly find in the violence-plagued nation. The bodies were found in black plastic bags in the municipality of Ojuelos, the state prosecutors’ office said. “A report was received indicating that, on the asphalt strip of the road ... there were several bags that looked like human silhouettes,” it said. Upon arriving at the site, National Guard members found the headless bodies of five men, wearing only pants. Nearby, they found another bag containing what appeared to be the heads of the victims, the office said, adding that forensic scientists were combing the area for evidence. The violence in Jalisco is blamed chiefly on the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel, one of nation’s most powerful and violent criminal groups. Official figures showed that 1,415 people were murdered in Jalisco in the first nine months of this year.
HONG KONG
Eight monkeys found dead
Eight animals were on Sunday found dead at the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department said in a statement, adding that necropsy and laboratory tests had been arranged to find out the cause of deaths. The animals were a De Brazza’s monkey, one common squirrel monkey, three cotton-top tamarins and three white-faced sakis, it said. While awaiting test results, the mammals section of the zoo was shut yesterday for disinfection and cleaning. “We will also closely monitor the health conditions of other animals,” it said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS