politics - Page 8

The New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) warned Wednesday it was poised to deploy “Defence Force assets” to Wellington to disband an anti-coronavirus vaccine mandate protest near New Zealand’s parliament building after the rally pushed into its ninth consecutive day.

The U.S. State Department recently offered a reward of up to $5 million for information that leads to the arrest of Joseph Kony, a Ugandan wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes of war and crimes of humanity, Uganda’s Nile Post News reported Monday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) shut down a road leading to the Pacific Highway border crossing — which connects Canada and the U.S. via their respective towns of Surrey and Blaine — on Monday in an effort to block anti-coronavirus vaccine mandate protesters from walking toward the U.S. border on foot, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.

Police in Fredericton, the capital of Canada’s New Brunswick province, told reporters on Thursday they “are not going to tolerate” any blocking of roads in the “downtown core” during an anti-coronavirus-restriction protest planned for Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.

Health officials in the Canadian province of Ontario are expected to announce an easing of pandemic restrictions on Thursday that have prohibited schoolchildren from participating in extracurricular activities — including sports such as hockey and basketball — since September 2021, the Toronto Star reported citing anonymous sources.

Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla — U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee to oversee U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia — “is floating the possibility of co-operating with the Taliban” in Afghanistan, the National, a U.A.E.-based newspaper, reported on Tuesday.

Residents of the remote Ukrainian village of Blahovishchenka, which borders Russia, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Monday they have seen no evidence in recent days indicating Moscow plans to stage a new military invasion of Ukraine.

Abdallah bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden — the former leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group — allegedly traveled to Afghanistan in October 2021 to meet with the Taliban, India Today reported on Sunday citing a United Nations (U.N.) report published February 3.

North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong-un described Beijing’s hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games as a “great victory” for China in a statement issued by North Korea’s state-run broadcaster Voice of Korea (VOK) on Friday.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin praised Russian athletes on Friday for their participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing – who are playing despite a massive doping scandal resulting in Russia being officially banned from the Games.

Kyiv and Ankara signed a preliminary deal during bilateral talks this week to manufacture Turkish drones in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported.

The governments of China and Argentina finalized an agreement on Tuesday to build a nuclear plant in Argentina based on Chinese technology and backed by $8 billion worth of Chinese financing, World Nuclear News (WNN) reported on Wednesday. The nuclear

India’s foreign ministry on Thursday announced a diplomatic “boycott” of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in response to China’s decision to elect a Chinese soldier who fought against India in a June 2020 border skirmish as a torchbearer for the Games, India’s CNN-News18 reported.

China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Beijing’s “most important guest” of the 2022 Winter Olympics despite the fact Russia’s national Olympic team is banned from competition by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Japan’s legislature passed a resolution on Tuesday “expressing concern” over China’s human rights violations in a document which failed to “directly mention China or use the term ‘human rights abuses,'” the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), reported.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will travel to Kyiv on February 3 where he will hold bilateral talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, amid recent political tension between Ukraine and Russia, Reuters reported on Monday.

Rahul Gandhi — a member of India’s left-wing opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC) — asked “When will we get back India’s territory that has been occupied by China?” in a post on Twitter Thursday considered by some to be directed toward India’s ruling, right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Asian News International (ANI) reported on Friday.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) staffers based at the organization’s Western Pacific headquarters in Manila recently accused the region’s W.H.O. chief, Takeshi Kasai, of blaming a rise in coronavirus cases in some Asian countries on their populations’ “lack of capacity due to their inferior culture, race and socioeconomic level,” the Associated Press (AP) reported Thursday.

Philippine Senator Manny Pacquiao said Thursday he plans to “file a Senate resolution” asking the Philippine federal government not to impose a Chinese coronavirus vaccine mandate on its public, the Philippine news outlet ABS-CBN reported.

Keir Starmer has been compared to communist dictators Vladimir Lenin and Fidel Castro by his Attorney General.

Russia will assume the presidency of the U.N. Security Council on February 1 for one month according to the body’s regular protocol, which rotates its leadership among the council’s members approximately every 30 days.

South Korea’s government on Friday paid $18 million toward Iran’s delinquent United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly dues using Iranian funds frozen in South Korea by U.S. sanctions meant to discourage Tehran’s nuclear proliferation, Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday.

The navies of Iran, China, and Russia launched a three-day joint maritime drill on Friday in the northern Indian Ocean designed to signal a “common future” between the three nations, Iranian Rear Admiral Mostafa Tajoldini told Iranian state television.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly plans to send as many as “46 officials, most of whom work for the [U.S.] Department of State,” to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

2021 saw the largest number of politically motivated crimes since the Federal Criminal Police Office began recording statistics in 2001. 

Leftist South Korean politician Lee Jae-myung — the official nominee of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) for the nation’s upcoming presidential election on March 9 — vowed on Friday to expand the public health insurance policy in South Korea to include treatments for hair loss if elected South Korea’s top leader.

El Salvador allowed two Cuban reporters to enter the Central American country on Wednesday after the men said they learned they would be denied entry to Nicaragua, their intended destination, while on a layover at an airport outside San Salvador on Tuesday, El Salvador’s General Directorate of Migration confirmed.

Three top candidates for the Philippines’ May 2022 presidential election, including boxer-turned-senator Manny Pacquiao and Ferdinand Marcos Jr., announced the temporary suspension of major campaign activities on Monday due to a recent surge in Chinese coronavirus cases nationwide, the Philippine Star reported.

Musashino, a city in western Tokyo, approved a plan that would allow foreign residents to vote in local referendums.

Nigeria’s aviation ministry announced plans on Sunday to ban incoming flights from the United Kingdom (U.K.), Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina starting this week in retaliation for flight bans on Nigeria ordered by those countries in recent days to prevent the spread of Omicron, a new coronavirus variant.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday dismissed reports that Australia plans to stage a “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February as “political posturing” by revealing “China hasn’t invited any Australian government official” to attend the Games and adding “no one would care whether they come or not.”

New Zealand announced Tuesday it will not send representatives at the ministerial level to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, in February because the “logistics of travel” during the coronavirus pandemic “are not conducive” to such a trip, though Wellington said its diplomats may still attend the Games.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Wednesday invited Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to visit Russia at an unspecified time in the future, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported.

The United Nations (U.N.) said Wednesday it “deferred” a decision on allowing Afghanistan’s Taliban entry to the intergovernmental organization’s General Assembly, effectively denying the group U.N. membership for now.

Botswana Health Minister Edwin Dikoloti told reporters Sunday the new coronavirus variant Omicron did not “originate” in Botswana but rather was first “detected” in a group of foreign diplomats who traveled to Botswana from an undisclosed location.

China’s state-run Global Times published an op-ed by its editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, on Thursday in which Hu argues that China “should be prepared with an iron fist” to use against Australia if the nation follows through with a recent promise to support the U.S. in a theoretical war with China over Taiwan.