JAPAN
Tokyo scrambles fighter jets
Tokyo scrambled fighter jets after Russian bombers flew over international waters around the nation, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said yesterday. “We confirmed that Russian military bombers and fighter jets flew over the high seas of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan yesterday, and we scrambled Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets” in response, he told reporters. “It is difficult to say clearly what the purpose of the flight was ... but the Russian military has been active on an ongoing basis in areas surrounding Japan,” he said. The Russian defense ministry reportedly announced that its long-range strategic bombers flew over international waters in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.
MYANMAR
State of emergency extended
The military junta has extended a state of emergency for another six months, state media reported yesterday, a day ahead of the four-year anniversary of a coup that plunged the country into chaos after a decade of tentative democracy. The nation has been locked in a civil war triggered by the military’s overthrow of the elected civilian government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The junta plans to hold an election this year, which critics have derided as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies. “There are still more tasks to be done to hold the general election successfully. Especially for a free and fair election, stability and peace is still needed,” state-run MRTV said on its Telegram channel in announcing the extension of emergency rule.
GUINEA
Sleeping sickness beaten
Sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease which is generally fatal without treatment, has been eliminated as a public health problem in the nation, the French Research Institute for Development (IRD) said on Thursday. The disease, also known as human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), is spread by infected tsetse flies and is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The Trypanosoma parasite enters the central nervous system, causing symptoms including behavior changes, confusion, poor coordination and sleep cycle disturbance. The nation has fallen “below the threshold for the elimination of the disease as a public health problem (less than one case per 10,000 inhabitants in the three endemic areas),” the IRD said in a statement cosigned by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative and the Institut Pasteur in Guinea.
UNITED STATES
Priest fired over ‘salute’
A Michigan priest had his license revoked by the Anglican Catholic Church after he mimicked a straight-arm gesture performed by Elon Musk during a speech earlier this month that some have interpreted as a Nazi salute. Calvin Robinson, who is listed as the priest-in-charge of St Paul’s Anglican Catholic Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, performed the gesture at the end of a speech at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington on Saturday last week. On Wednesday, the Anglican Catholic Church posted a statement that said Robinson’s “license in this Church has been revoked” after he made a “gesture that many have interpreted as a pro-Nazi salute.” “While we cannot say what was in Mr Robinson’s heart when he did this, his action appears to have been an attempt to curry favor with certain elements of the American political right by provoking its opposition,” it said. “We believe that those who mimic the Nazi salute, even as a joke or an attempt to troll their opponents, trivialize the horror of the Holocaust.”
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
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