While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 29, 2024
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The US says it will not impose new limits on Ukraine’s use of American weapons if North Korea enters the fight with Russia.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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No new limits on Ukraine’s use of US arms, Pentagon warns
The United States will not impose new limits on Ukraine’s use of American weapons if North Korea enters the fight, the Pentagon said on Oct 28, as Nato said North Korean military units had been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region.
The North Korea deployment is fanning Western concerns that the two-and-a-half-year conflict in Ukraine could widen, even as attention shifts to the Middle East.
It could be a sign of how Russia hopes to offset mounting battlefield losses and continue making slow, steady gains in eastern Ukraine.
“The deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security,” Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters, after talks with a South Korean delegation about the North Korean deployments.
Trump-allied comedian blasted for calling Puerto Rico ‘garbage’
Political leaders from both sides of the aisle and Puerto Rican celebrities bashed comments at a major Donald Trump event in New York by a comedian who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
Speaking before the Republican presidential candidate at a rally at Madison Square Garden on the night of Oct 27, comedian and podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe added that Latinos “love making babies” and that they do not “pull out,” comments that leaned into a racist trope that Latinos are preoccupied with childbearing and averse to birth control.
“There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,” Mr Hinchcliffe said.
Tens of thousands protest in Georgia over ‘stolen’ election
Tens of thousands of Georgians protested in central Tbilisi on Oct 28 after parliamentary polls denounced by the pro-Western opposition as “stolen”, while Georgia’s president alleged to AFP that the vote was rigged using “sophisticated” methods she linked to Russia.
The Caucasus country - rocked by mass anti-government protests earlier this year - has plunged into political uncertainty since the Oct 26 vote, with Washington and Brussels condemning “irregularities”.
According to near-complete results announced by the electoral commission, the ruling Georgian Dream party won 53.92 per cent, compared with the 37.78 per cent garnered by a union of four pro-Western opposition alliances.
Mowed down by cars, European hedgehog numbers shrinking
AFP
The Western European hedgehog - the prickly, nocturnal critter people love to encounter in the garden - is in decline, mowed down by cars as its shrinking habitat forces it to move ever closer to humans.
An updated Red List of Threatened Species published on Oct 28 at the UN’s COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, upgraded the hedgehog’s status from “least concern” to “near threatened”.
The next level on the list kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is “vulnerable,” then “endangered.”
Real Madrid boycott Ballon d’Or ceremony
AFP
The Ballon d’Or ceremony got under way on Oct 28 in the absence of Real Madrid stars Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham, after the Spanish club said it would boycott the event over a perceived snub of its players.
Vinicius was not among the nominees who paraded onto the stage at the Paris’ Chatelet Theatre where the ceremony was held. He was featured in a video montage shown to guests at the ceremony and TV viewers.
The seven players from the Real Madrid contingent who were short-listed for the individual award, including Kylian Mbappe, Antonio Rudiger, Fede Valverde and the retired Toni Kroos, did not show up to walk the red carpet before the ceremony began.
