VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Sunday voiced his hope that the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games will provide an opportunity for countries at war to respect an ancient Greek tradition and establish a truce for the duration of the Games.
“According to ancient tradition, may the Olympics be an opportunity to establish a truce in wars, demonstrating a sincere will for peace,” Francis said during his Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
The Pope stressed that sport also has “a great social power, capable of peacefully uniting people from different cultures.”
The opening ceremony of the 33rd Olympic Games will be held in Paris on July 26 with the participation of 205 delegations of athletes, who will parade on more than 80 boats on the Seine.
“I hope that this event can be a sign of the inclusive world we want to build and that the athletes, with their sporting testimony, may be messengers of peace and valuable models for the young,” Francis added.
The pope, as always, asked the faithful to pray for peace, recalling the ongoing conflicts around the world.
“Let us not forget the martyred Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar, and many other countries at war. Let us not forget, war is a defeat,” he concluded.
Pope Francis calls for Olympic truce for countries at war, prays for peace
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Pope Francis calls for Olympic truce for countries at war, prays for peace
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- The Pope stressed that sport has “a great social power, capable of peacefully uniting people from different cultures.”
Philippines’ deported ex-mayor Alice Guo arrives home from Indonesia
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- Alice Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, was arrested by Indonesian authorities on Wednesday
- Guo, who says she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, has denied the accusations, calling them malicious
Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, was arrested by Indonesian authorities on Wednesday after leaving the Philippines in July. She is wanted by the Philippine Senate for refusing to appear before a congressional investigation into her alleged criminal ties.
Philippine law enforcement agencies, including the anti-money laundering council (AMLC), have filed several counts of money laundering against Guo and 35 others with the justice department.
Guo, who says she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, has denied the accusations, calling them malicious. She was deported from Indonesia for violating immigration laws, Jakarta’s immigration office said on Thursday.
The former mayor arrived in Manila on a private plane flanked by Philippine law enforcement authorities, including the country’s interior minister, Benjamin Abalos Jr., who led her handover from Indonesian authorities in Jakarta on Thursday.
“I have received death threats and I am asking for the help (of Philippine authorities),” Guo told a press briefing shortly after her arrival in Manila.
Abalos committed to provide security for Guo, but urged her to disclose the truth. “Disclose all the names in order to serve justice and so all this ends. That is the only way we can help her,” he said.
The Senate launched an investigation into Guo in May after a raid in March by law enforcers on a casino in Bamban town, where she was mayor, uncovered what they said were scams run from a facility built on land Guo partly owned.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. urged Guo on Friday to disclose how these offshore gaming operators, locally known as POGOs, had branched out into crime. Marcos banned the online gambling industry in July.
“It will not help her at all to be evasive,” Marcos told reporters. Guo is set to appear before the Senate on Monday when it resumes its investigation.
Guo became mayor of Bamban town in Tarlac province in the northern Philippines in 2022. She ran as a Filipino citizen but her fingerprints were later found to match those of a Chinese national, Guo Hua Ping, the National Bureau of Investigation said in August.
In August an anti-graft office removed her as mayor on the grounds of grave misconduct over her alleged ties to illegal gaming operations in Bamban.
China stops foreign adoptions of its children after three decades
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- More than 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted by families across the world since 1992
- It was not immediately clear what would happen to families who were in the process of adopting children from China
HONG KONG: China will no longer send children overseas for adoption, the government said, overturning a more than three-decade rule that was rooted in its once strict one-child policy.
More than 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted by families across the world since 1992, when China first opened its doors to international adoption.
Around 82,000 of these children, mostly girls, have been adopted in the United States, according to China’s Children International (CCI).
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Mao Ning said the Chinese government had adjusted its cross-border adoption policy to be “in line” with international trends.
“Apart from the adoption of a child or stepchild of blood relatives of the same generation who are within three generations of foreigners coming to China to adopt, China will not send children abroad for adoption,” Mao said.
“We express our appreciation to those foreign governments and families, who wish to adopt Chinese children, for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown,” she added.
It was not immediately clear what would happen to families who were in the process of adopting children from China.
The rule change comes as Chinese policymakers struggle to encourage young couples to get married and have children after the population fell for two consecutive years.
China has one of the lowest birth rates globally and has been trying to incentivise young women to have children. Many, however, have been put off by the high cost of childcare, worries over job security and their future outlook as growth in the world’s second largest economy slows.
China implemented a rigorous one-child policy from 1979-2015 to reduce its population. When families were restricted to having only one child, many opted to keep male children, who are traditionally expected to be the main caregivers for their families, and give up females for adoption.
China’s move to halt international adoptions comes after the Netherlands in May banned its citizens from adopting children from foreign countries. In Denmark, people will no longer be able to adopt children from abroad after the only adoption agency said it was stopping operations.
World’s largest indoor ski resort opens in Shanghai as China logs hottest month
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Shanghai: Shanghai opened the world’s largest indoor ski resort on Friday, welcoming visitors in snowsuits to its pistes as China reported its hottest August in 60 years.
This year’s northern summer saw the highest global temperatures ever recorded, and in the faux Alpine square where the resort’s opening ceremony took place, the mercury had already hit 30 degrees Celsius by 9:00 am.
But the temperature plummeted to well below zero inside the cavernous atrium, where visitors switched from sunglasses and T-shirts into padded overalls, some opting for designer goggles or flapping bat-winged helmets.
At the top of a piste, snowboarder Jessica Zhang was unfazed by the August heat record.
“When it comes to climate I feel like you get ups and downs in temperature — maybe every few years a hottest year comes along,” she shrugged.
This year is likely to be the Earth’s hottest ever logged, beating the record set in 2023, according to the EU’s climate monitor.
China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, although in recent years it has also emerged as a global leader in renewable energy.
Climate change has affected traditional outdoor skiing destinations, with ice and snow retreating as world temperatures rise.
“In China, it might have more of an effect in the north because of climate change, there are fewer people doing winter sports there... so some of the snow parks just aren’t operating well, they’re shrinking,” said Zhang Jin, a 48-year-old skier.
“Instead, it’s this kind of thing that’s opening up right now, larger indoor ones, which I think is still pretty good.”
Even as the country warms, huge government support and the interest of an expanding middle class have seen the ski industry coast to new heights in China, particularly after Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The country leads the world when it comes to indoor ski resort building, boasting half of the world’s top ten based on snow area, according to Daxue Consulting.
On Friday, the Shanghai L*SNOW Indoor Skiing Theme Resort was officially certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest, overtaking the previous record-holder — also in China, in northern Harbin.
Modelled like a glacier, the almost 100,000-square-meter snow world towers over coastal Lingang, about 1.5 hours away from the city center.
Inside, a chairlift, cable car, and a green and red “steam train” ferry visitors to the complex’s four ski slopes and other rides.
“There were no ski resorts around Shanghai before and there was no way to practice in the summer. But now I have the opportunity to do it... so I’m quite happy,” snowboarder Cynthia Zhang told AFP before launching herself down the curving white incline.
A Shanghai government report in August acknowledged that such projects “will inevitably consume a lot of energy.”
Resort executive Yin Kang told AFP that to keep the temperature below zero, 72 cooling machines and 33 snow-making machines worked continuously.
The Shanghai government report said the resort was built to maximize energy reuse, through elements such as its ice storage and waste-heat recovery systems.
Over three quarters of the resort’s rooftop is covered in photovoltaics, or solar panels, which helps counteract its carbon footprint, it said.
“We have taken a lot of energy-saving measures,” Yin told AFP.
The resort’s completion has been pushed back several times. Industry media reported its originally planned opening date to be 2019.
Its soft opening period has not been wholly smooth.
The resort said it would add more safety measures after an accident in which a guest claimed a finger was severed, state media reported Wednesday.
Myanmar communists take in liberated elephants as battle against junta rages
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MANDALAY: Communist rebels battling Myanmar’s junta have taken in 138 elephants as fighting rages in the jungles and scrubland around Mandalay.
The tuskers have been coming into the rebel camp in twos and threes since July, many led by handlers fleeing the junta-controlled timber camps that employ them.
Others have been taken as spoils in territory captured by the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) as it battles the military and its 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.
“We were worried that if no one took control of them, these elephants would fall into the hands of traffickers,” said Ni Ni Kyaw, the general secretary of the CPB’s People’s Liberation Army.
“If these elephants reach the black market or are taken by traffickers, they will have a huge problem,” she told AFP on Thursday.
State timber enterprises in Myanmar are thought to employ around 3,000 elephants, the majority dragging freshly cut trees through the dense jungle to transport hubs and mills.
At one PLA camp last week, around a dozen of the animals knelt in a line alongside their handlers before heading off on a march.
A (CPB) soldier clad in camouflage and carrying a rifle stepped up to the wooden platform on one elephant’s back and the small herd rumbled off into the forest.
In olden times Burmese kings fought their rivals on elephant-back and rode the beasts into battle, according to chronicles.
But Ni Ni Kyaw said it was not certain how the communists would use the animals in their battle against the military.
“We are worried that we are going to lose this treasure of our country, therefore, we will take care of them as best as we can,” she said.
The PLA was providing rice and cooking oil to the elephant handlers — known as mahouts — and their family members, she added.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and seized power in 2021.
The resulting military crackdown reignited clashes with long-established ethnic minority armed groups, as well as newly formed pro-democracy “People’s Defense Forces.”
The military has lost swaths of territory in northern Shan state and around Mandalay to an alliance of the armed ethnic minority groups and PDFs battling to overturn the coup.
“Even our human beings have many difficulties due to the current fighting and there are a lot of displaced people,” said Ni Ni Kyaw.
“Elephants have big bodies and they eat a lot, so they need a lot of space in the jungle.”
“When the revolution ends one day, we will have a new government and will hand these elephants to the forest department.”
NATO chief urges China to stop supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine
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- Jens Stoltenberg: ‘China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine’
- China has previously described similar statements made by NATO as ‘malicious’ and biased
OSLO: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday called on China to stop supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine and said Beijing’s assistance has been a significant factor in the continuation of the war.
“China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo. “China is the one that enables production of many of the weapons that Russia uses.”
Stoltenberg warned that Beijing’s continuous fueling of the war in Ukraine could adversely impact its interests and reputation.
“I call on China to stop supporting Russia’s illegal war,” he said.
China has previously described similar statements made by NATO as ‘malicious’ and biased.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in July he does not want China, which has a “no limits” partnership with Russia, to act as a mediator but hoped Beijing would apply greater pressure on Moscow to end the war.