While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, June 17
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Singapore's Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan (left) with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) at a joint press conference at the State Department on Friday.
PHOTO: MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS SINGAPORE
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Singapore, US to expand cooperation to new frontiers
Singapore and the United States are expanding their relationship to new frontiers of bilateral cooperation in cyber security, climate change, and space, said Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan on Friday, after a bilateral meeting hosted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Dr Balakrishnan said the US-Singapore Climate Partnership signed in 2021 will see intensified efforts in regional energy transitions, low- and zero-emission technologies and solutions, nature-based solutions and carbon markets, and urban decarbonisation and resilience.
Speaking alongside Dr Balakrishnan at a joint press conference at the State Department, Mr Blinken said the collaboration is rooted in one of the US’ strongest bilateral relationships in the Indo-Pacific.
“American companies… are the largest source of foreign direct investment in Singapore. We’re working to grow our economies even faster and even fairer through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, of which Singapore was an early and enthusiastic supporter,” he said.
Putin says Ukraine’s Zelensky is ‘disgrace to Jewish people’
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, was a “disgrace” to people of his faith.
“I have a lot of Jewish friends,” Mr Putin told an annual economic forum in Saint Petersburg. “They say that Zelensky is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people... I’m not joking.”
His insult caused uproar in Ukraine, where the country’s chief rabbi said he was proud of Mr Zelensky. “And not only me. I think the whole world is proud of him,” Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman told Ukrainian news agency UNIAN.
Massive rockslide just misses Swiss village
EPA-EFE
A Swiss village came within a hair’s breadth of being wiped off the map when a mountain towering above it collapsed overnight, officials said on Friday.
The massive rockslide missed Brienz in the east of the country, “by a hair”, they said.
The rockslide had been expected. The village was emptied of its 84 inhabitants on May 12 after the authorities said the Insel peak had become unstable.
Cyclist Gino Mader dies after fall into ravine
Swiss rider Gino Mader died on Friday from the injuries he sustained when he plunged into a ravine during the Tour of Switzerland.
The 26-year-old Bahrain Victorious rider fell during a high-speed descent on the fifth stage between Fiesch and La Punt on Thursday, after an exhausting day marked by three ascents over 2,000 metres altitude.
He had been found “lifeless in the water” of a ravine below the road, “immediately resuscitated then transported to the hospital in Chur by air”, organisers said. But the next day, “Gino lost his battle to recover from the serious injuries he sustained”, Bahrain-Victorious said in a statement.
NBA suspends Ja Morant 25 games over alleged firearm video
Getty Images via AFP
The National Basketball Association has suspended Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant for 25 games without pay, after finding he “intentionally and prominently” displayed a firearm in a live-streamed video on May 13.
The two-time All-Star was previously suspended for eight games in March, after he appeared in another social media video holding a firearm at a nightclub.
The Grizzlies suspended Morant from team activities in May over the latest incident, in which he appeared to pose with a firearm in a car, conduct that the NBA found to be “detrimental to the league.”
