FILE - Serbia's Novak Djokovic, March 1, 2023.
(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)
By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer – After Novak Djokovic withdrew from tournaments in Florida and California because he still can’t travel to the United States as a foreign citizen who is not vaccinated against COVID-19, a U.S. Tennis Association spokesman said Saturday the group is “very hopeful” the top-ranked player will be allowed into the country for the U.S. Open in August.
“Policies concerning access to the United States are determined by the White House. We are very hopeful that the policy preventing Novak Djokovic from entering the United States will be rescinded, or lapse, in the near future,” the USTA’s Chris Widmaier wrote to The Associated Press.
“No COVID-19 restrictions are in place at the U.S. Open for any player, fan or other attendee. Novak, one of our sport’s great champions, would be welcome to compete at the 2023 U.S. Open.”
The two-week U.S. Open starts in Flushing Meadows on Aug. 28.
Serbia’s Novak Djokovic after defeating Croatia’s Marin Cilic during their Davis Cup tennis semi-final match at Madrid Arena in Madrid, Spain, on Dec. 3, 2021. Photo: Bernat Armangue / AP File
Djokovic, a 35-year-old from Serbia, was unable to get to New York for the season’s last Grand Slam tournament in 2022, when he also missed the Miami Open and BNP Paribas Open because he never got the shots for the illness caused by the coronavirus.
A six-time Miami Open champion, Djokovic is out of the field for the event that begins next week, a spokesman for the Miami Open said Saturday.
But he will now have missed the first two Masters 1000 events of the season. He also pulled out of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, which ends this weekend.
Back in in April 2020, as the pandemic raged, Djokovic said he was opposed to needing to be vaccinated to travel. He later said he would not get inoculated even if it meant missing tournaments.
Novak Djokovic of Serbia gestures as he holds the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup after defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece in the men’s singles final at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)
In January 2022, he tried to get an exemption to compete at the Australian Open and traveled to Melbourne. But after his case went to court, his visa was revoked and Djokovic was deported from the country.
Pandemic restrictions have been eased in Australia since, and Djokovic returned this year without a problem and won the season’s first major championship.
Meanwhile, Nadal has been sidelined since hurting his left hip flexor during a second-round loss at Melbourne Park. He is aiming to return to action at the Monte Carlo Masters next month.
Photo taken on March 19, 2023, shows police at the site of a house which was gutted by a fire in Nagano, central Japan, the previous day. (Kyodo)
NAGANO – A 32-year-old man was arrested Saturday for arson after a fire gutted the house where he lived in the central Japan prefecture of Nagano, apparently killing three of his family members, police said.
Three bodies believed to be those of the man’s father, Hitoshi Nakamura, mother and grandmother in her 90s were found after the fire at the two-story house.
The man, whose identity was withheld by police, and his brother both escaped the fire without major injuries.
The fire broke out in the early hours of Saturday and was extinguished in about three hours.
The man has admitted to setting fire to his house, according to the police.
The alleged arsonist worked at a facility for people with disabilities, NHK reported, saying that the police are not disclosing his name on the grounds that he has a disability.
A Chinese tourist poses with her newly bought Thai student uniform in Bangkok on Mar. 7, 2023.
The new fad among some relatively young female Chinese tourists to Thailand for dressing like Thai school girls in uniform perplexed many Thais, including the local media which claim it is Thailand’s new soft power.
BBC Thai-language news service was among the local media reporting about it. It interviewed a 36-year-old female Chinese tourist on why she likes the uniform, and the answer was she feels young again and “wearing Thai school uniform made me feel pure.”
Her answer says a lot about how tourists have a strong tendency to idealize, or at least stereotype, the host country and culture. It is well-known in Thailand that there is a persistent movement among male and female school students in calling for the abolition of school uniforms as they regard them as a symbol of coercion, lack of free will, and a straight-jacket society.
That is not how the Chinese tourists see these Thai school uniforms, however. As a tourist, you can choose to idealize certain cultural artifacts of the host society whichever way you like. When you are a tourist, the penchant is for an idealized and stereotyped version of the society you are visiting.
This is simply because most people spend time and money to travel and visit another country to have a good time and relax so they more often than not see things through pink-tinted lenses. (There are also those who see things in the host society with exaggerated negativity and distrust, such as some westerners strongly believe all Thai cab drivers will try to cheat them, but it can also be argued that both ends of the spectrum still constitute a form of stereotype nonetheless.)
Think about Paris syndrome as another example. Some Japanese tourists who flock to Paris suffer from Paris syndrome because they have painted an idealized image of Paris as arguably the most romantic and civilized city in the Western world. When they were met with rude waiters, dog manure, olfactory of canine urine, relatively dirty metro that comes with pick pocketers as fellow commuters, moody Parisians, and suddenly it was beyond culture shock and threw them into a state of disillusionment and trauma.
Back to Thailand, we do selectively appropriate many aspects of foreign cultures and artifacts as well. Some (increasingly old) Thais enjoy dressing up like cowboys from hat to boot and indulge in American country music. To them, the history of American oppression against native Americans in the Wild West is irrelevant – they selectively imagine themselves as cool cowboys and do not associate their cosplay with any guilt related to American historical oppression against native Americans.
Many younger Thais meanwhile adore all things K-pop and by extension South Korean society, but too little is being discussed about the fact that women, and particularly LGBTQ people, continue to face substantial discrimination, making the society far from its idealized version often perceived by young Thais or portrayed by mainstream K-pop industry.
Like a heavily edited or photoshop picture, we see what we want to see and would not let some inconvenient reality get into the way of our enjoyment over the idealization of certain aspects of foreign culture and society. Reality and certain facts are just too inconvenient for some tourists, both armchair and non-sedentary ones, or even irrelevant to their enjoyment of foreign countries and cultures.
Security camera shows the victim being pulled into a van in Bangkok's Thonglor area on Mar. 16, 2023.
BANGKOK — Police on Sunday said three Chinese nationals were arrested in connection with the abduction of a compatriot in Bangkok earlier this week.
Deputy metropolitan police commander Noppasin Poonsawat said three suspects, identified as Chinese nationals Ran Xiaoyong, Nie Lijiao, and Zeng Bo, were apprehended at a hotel in the border town of Aranyaprathet this morning. They were transferred to Bangkok and charged with extortion and unlawful detention.
Security camera footage shows the victim being lured to a van by a female suspect in front of a restaurant in Bangkok’s Thonglor area on Thursday night before two men approaching the victim and forcing her into the van.
The captors then restrained the victim and demanded a 200,000 USDT (6.8 million baht) ransom in cryptocurrency, which the victim eventually transferred 8,014 USDT (around 270,000 baht) and 250,000 yuan (1.2 million baht) to the captors’ accounts, police said.
As they were on the road, the captors also reached out to the victim’s boyfriend and demanded another 50,000 USDT (1.7 million baht) from him, which he paid the ransom. The victim was abandoned by her captors in front of a house in Bangkok’s Min Buri district on the next morning.
The suspects
Maj. Gen. Noppasin said the female suspect had befriended the victim for almost a year after learning about a large fund she received from expropriations in China. Investigators are looking into whether more people were involved in the plot or whether the case is connected to a larger human trafficking ring in Myanmar, he said.
There were cases of Chinese nationals being abducted by their countrymen in Thailand in the past. In November 2022, a Chinese national was arrested for the alleged abduction of a compatriot businessman in Pattaya, torturing him and cutting off his finger for a 30-million baht ransom.
Former President Donald J. Trump gestures to Vito Arujau, NCAA wrestling champion at the 133 lb class, at the NCAA Wrestling Championships, Saturday, March 18, 2023, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that his arrest is imminent and issued an extraordinary call for his supporters to protest as a New York grand jury investigates hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president.
Even as Trump’s lawyer and spokesperson said there had been no communication from prosecutors, Trump declared in a post on his social media platform that he expects to be taken into custody on Tuesday.
His message seemed designed to preempt a formal announcement from prosecutors and to galvanize outrage from his base of supporters in advance of widely anticipated charges. Within hours, his campaign was sending fundraising solicitations to his supporters, while influential Republicans in Congress and even some declared and potential rival candidates issued statements in his defense.
In a later post that went beyond simply exhorting loyalists to protest about his legal peril, the 2024 presidential candidate directed his overarching ire in all capital letters at the Biden administration and raised the prospect of civil unrest: “IT’S TIME!!!” he wrote. “WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
It all evoked, in foreboding ways, the rhetoric he used shortly before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. After hearing from the then-president at a Washington rally that morning, his supporters marched to the Capitol and tried to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s White House victory, breaking through doors and windows of the building and leaving officers beaten and bloodied.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg is thought to be eyeing charges in the hush money investigation, and recently offered Trump a chance to testify before the grand jury. Local law enforcement officials are bracing for the public safety ramifications of an unprecedented prosecution of a former American president.
But there has been no public announcement of any time frame for the grand jury’s secret work in the case. At least one additional witness is expected to testify, further indicating that no vote to indict has yet been taken, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to publicly discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
That did not stop Trump from taking to his social media platform to say “illegal leaks” from Bragg’s office indicate that “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK.”
This image shows a screenshot from the Truth Social network account of former President Donald Trump, posted on Saturday, March 18, 2023. (AP Photo)
A Trump lawyer, Susan Necheles, said Trump’s post was “based on the media reports,” and a spokesperson said there had been “no notification” from Bragg’s office, though the origin of Trump’s Tuesday reference was unclear. The district attorney’s office declined to comment.
Trump’s aides and legal team have been preparing for the possibility of an indictment. Should that happen, he would be arrested only if he refused to surrender. Trump’s lawyers have previously said he would follow normal procedure, meaning he would likely agree to surrender at a New York Police Department precinct or directly to Bragg’s office.
It is unclear whether Trump’s supporters would heed his protest call or if he retains the same persuasive power he held as president. Trump’s posts on Truth Social generally receive far less attention than he used to get on Twitter, but he maintains a deeply loyal base. The aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, in which hundreds of Trump loyalists were arrested and prosecuted in federal court, may also have dampened the passion among supporters for confrontation.
The indictment of Trump, 76, would be an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings.
Former President Donald J. Trump poses for a photo with Vito Arujau, second from right, NCAA wrestling champion in the 133 lb class, and his family, at the NCAA Wrestling Championships, Saturday, March 18, 2023, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Even as Trump pursues his latest White House campaign — his first rally is set for Waco, Texas, later this month and he shook hands and took selfies with fans during a public appearance Saturday evening at the NCAA Division I wrestling championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma — there is no question an indictment would be a distraction and give fodder to opponents and critics tired of the legal scandals that have long enveloped him.
Besides the hush money inquiry in New York, Trump faces separate criminal investigations in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election.
A Justice Department special counsel has also been presenting evidence before a grand jury investigating Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate. It is not clear when those investigations will end or whether they might result in criminal charges, but they will continue regardless of what happens in New York, underscoring the ongoing gravity – and broad geographic scope – of the legal challenges facing the former president.
Trump’s post Saturday echoes one made last summer when he broke the news on Truth Social that the FBI was searching his Florida home as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents.
News of that search sparked a flood of contributions to Trump’s political operation, and on Saturday, Trump sent out a series of fundraising emails to his supporters, including one that claimed, “I’m not worried in the slightest.”
After his post, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy decried any plans to prosecute Trump as an “outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA” whom he claimed was pursuing “political vengeance.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, issued a statement with a similar sentiment.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump fly a flag from a boat reading “Trust the Plan” outside of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Saturday, March 18, 2023, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
The grand jury has been hearing from witnesses, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who says he orchestrated payments in 2016 to two women to silence them about sexual encounters they said they had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump denies the encounters occurred, says he did nothing wrong and has cast the investigation as a “witch hunt” by a Democratic prosecutor bent on sabotaging the Republican’s 2024 campaign. Trump also has labeled Bragg, who is Black, a “racist” and has accused the prosecutor of letting crime in the city run amok while he has focused on Trump. New York remains one of the safest cities in the country.
Bragg’s office has apparently been examining whether any state laws were broken in connection with the payments or the way Trump’s company compensated Cohen for his work to keep the women’s allegations quiet.
Porn actor Stormy Daniels and at least two former Trump aides — onetime political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokesperson Hope Hicks — are among witnesses who have met with prosecutors in recent weeks.
Cohen has said that at Trump’s direction, he arranged payments totaling $280,000 to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. According to Cohen, the payouts were to buy their silence about Trump, who was then in the thick of his first presidential campaign.
Cohen and federal prosecutors said Trump’s company paid him $420,000 as reimbursement for the $130,000 payment to Daniels and to cover bonuses and other supposed expenses. The company classified those payments internally as legal expenses. The $150,000 payment to McDougal was made by the then-publisher of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, which kept her story from coming to light.
Federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute the Enquirer’s corporate parent in exchange for its cooperation in a campaign finance investigation that led to charges against Cohen in 2018. Prosecutors said the payments to Daniels and McDougal amounted to impermissible, unrecorded gifts to Trump’s election effort.
Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors never charged Trump with any crime.
News that law enforcement agencies were preparing for a possible indictment was first reported by NBC News.
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Eric Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina and Sean Murphy in Tulsa, Oklahoma — contributed to this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev as he arrives to visit the Children's Art and Aesthetic center in Sevastopol, Crimea, Saturday, March 18, 2023. (Sputnik, Kremlin Press Service Pool Photo via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine on Saturday, the day after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader accusing him of war crimes.
Putin visited an art school and a children’s center that are part of a project to develop a historical park on the site of an ancient Greek colony, Russian state news agencies said.
The ICC accused him Friday of bearing personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine during Russia’s full-scale invasion of the neighboring country that started almost 13 months ago.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world denounced as illegal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded that Russia withdraw from the peninsula as well as the areas it has occupied since last year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has traveled to Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of the Black Sea peninsula’s annexation from Ukraine. (Sputnik, Kremlin Press Service Pool Photo via AP)
Putin has shown no intention of relinquishing the Kremlin’s gains. Instead, he stressed Friday the importance of holding Crimea.
“Obviously, security issues take top priority for Crimea and Sevastopol now,” he said, referring to Crimea’s largest city. “We will do everything needed to fend off any threats.”
Putin took a plane to travel the 1,821 kilometers (1,132 miles) from Moscow to Sevastopol, where he took the wheel of the car that transported him around the city, according to Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhaev.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev, center, listen to Metropolitan of Pskov and Porkhov Tikhon Shevkunov while visiting the Children’s Art and Aesthetic center in Sevastopol, Crimea, Saturday, March 18, 2023. (Sputnik, Kremlin Press Service Pool Photo via AP)
The ICC’s arrest warrant was the first issued against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.
The move was immediately dismissed by Moscow — and welcomed by Ukraine as a major breakthrough. However, the chances of Putin facing trial at the ICC are highly unlikely because Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals.
Despite the court’s action and its implication’s for Putin, the United Nations and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Saturday that a wartime deal that allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia was extended, although neither said for how long.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov tweeted that the deal had been renewed for 120 days, the period that Ukraine, Turkey and the U.N. wanted. But Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Russian news agency Tass that Moscow agreed to a 60-day extension.
Russia and Ukraine are both major global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other affordable food products that developing nations depend on. They signed separate agreements with the U.N. and Turkey last year to allow food to leave Ukraine’s blockaded ports.
Russia has complained that shipments of its fertilizers — which its deal was supposed to facilitate — are not getting to global markets. The country briefly pulled out of the agreement in November before rejoining and agreeing to a 120-day renewal.
Putin signed a law Saturday that imposes stiff fines for discrediting or spreading misleading information about volunteers or mercenaries fighting in Ukraine. The law calls for a fining individuals 50,000 rubles ($660) for a first offense and up to 15 years in prison for repeated offenses.
The measure mirrors one passed in the early days of the war that applied to speaking negatively about soldiers or the Russian military in general.
Fighters from the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company known for fierce tactics, have taken key roles in Ukraine, particularly in Russia’s grinding campaign to seize the eastern Donetsk province town of Bakhmut.
Members of the Russian biker group Nochniye Volki (the Night Wolves) drive with Russian national flags toward Sevastopol attending a motor rally marking the ninth anniversary of Crimea annexation from Ukraine, Crimea, Saturday, March 18, 2023. (AP Photo)
In Ukraine, authorities reported widespread Russian attacks between Friday night and Saturday morning. Writing on Telegram, the Ukrainian air force command said 11 out of 16 drones were shot down during attacks that targeted the capital, Kyiv, and the western Lviv province, among other areas.
The head of the Kyiv city administration, Serhii Popko, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down all drones heading for the capital. Lviv Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said Saturday that three of six drones were shot down, with the other three hitting a district that borders Poland.
According to the Ukrainian air force, the attacks were carried out from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov and Russia’s Bryansk province, which also borders Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military reported that between Friday morning and Saturday morning, Russian forces launched 34 airstrikes, one missile strike and 57 rounds of anti-aircraft fire. It said falling debris hit southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, damaging seven houses and a kindergarten.
Russia is still concentrating the bulk of its offensive operations in Ukraine’s industrial east, focusing attacks on Bakhmut and other parts of Donetsk province.
Regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said one person was killed and three wounded when 11 towns and villages in the province were shelled Friday.
A damaged restaurant is seen after Russian shelling hit in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, March 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)
Further west, Russian rockets hit a residential area overnight in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital of the partially occupied province of the same name. No casualties were reported, but houses were damaged, Anatoliy Kurtev of the Zaporizhzhia City Council said.
British military officials said Saturday that Russia was likely to expand mandatory conscription to replenish its troops fighting in Ukraine. The U.K. Defense Ministry said in its latest analysis that deputies in the Russian Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, introduced a bill to change the draft ages for men to 21-30, from the current 18-27.
The ministry said many Russian men ages 18-21 claim exemptions from military service because they are enrolled in higher education institutions. The wider age range would mean they would have to serve eventually. British officials said the law would likely pass and take effect in January 2024.
Cambodia's Government Cabinet, dancers perform during an handing over ceremony at Peace Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, March 17, 2023..(Kok Ky/Cambodia's Government Cabinet via AP)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Centuries-old cultural artifacts that had been illegally smuggled out from Cambodia were welcomed home Friday at a celebration led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who offered thanks for their return and appealed for further efforts to retrieve such stolen treasures.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, center right, prays together with his minister of Culture and Fine Arts Phoeung Sackona, center left, in front of a sandstone statue at Peace Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, March 17, 2023. (Kok Ky/Cambodia’s Government Cabinet via AP)
Many, if not all, of the items displayed at the government’s offices Friday had been looted from Cambodia during periods of war and instability, including in the 1970s when the country was under the brutal rule of the communist Khmer Rouge. Through unscrupulous art dealers, they made their way into the hands of private collectors and museums around the world.
A statement from the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts described the returned artifacts as embodying the “priceless cultural heritage and the souls of generations of Khmer ancestors.”
In this photo provided by Kok Ky/Cambodia’s Government Cabinet, jewelries are displayed during a handing over ceremony at Peace Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, March 17, 2023. (Kok Ky/Cambodia’s Government Cabinet via AP)Jewelries are displayed during a handing over ceremony at Peace Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, March 17, 2023. (Kok Ky/Cambodia’s Government Cabinet via AP)
The statement credited the items’ return to “tremendous cooperation and support” from public and private institutions, national and international experts, and close relations with other countries through bilateral, multi-lateral and international institutions, including UNESCO.
It also singled out cooperation between the Cambodian and U.S. governments. Many of the items returned so far have come from the United States.
The returned items included important Hindu and Buddhist statues, as well as ancient jewelry from the once-mighty empire of Angkor.
In February, a spectacular collection of jewelry was returned to Cambodia from the estate of antiquities collector and dealer Douglas Latchford, who was accused of buying and selling looted artifacts. The 77 pieces of jewelry included crowns, necklaces, bracelets, belts, earrings and amulets.
An ancient crown returned to Cambodia from Britain. (Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts/Handout via Xinhua)An ancient crown returned to Cambodia from Britain. (Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts/Handout via Xinhua)
U.S. prosecutors indicted him in 2019 on charges related to alleged trafficking in stolen and looted Cambodian antiquities. Latchford, who died in 2020, had denied any involvement in smuggling.
In remarks to an invited audience that included U.S. Ambassador W. Patrick Murphy, Hun Sen said that some Cambodian sculptures are still missing and held in foreign countries, and he appealed for their return in the spirit of goodwill. He said his government is determined to use all means at its disposal to secure those stolen artifacts, including negotiations and legal action.
The 10th-century statue of Skanda atop a peacock, upper, is displayed during a handing over ceremony at Peace Palace, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, March 17, 2023. (Kok Ky/Cambodia’s Government Cabinet via AP)
“The United States joins Cambodians in celebrating the return of looted artifacts back to their rightful home in the Kingdom,” said a statement from the U.S. Embassy.
“For 20 years the United States has worked to protect, preserve, and honor Cambodia’s rich cultural heritage with local partners, American academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations,” it said. “Through a long-standing U.S.-Cambodia cultural property agreement, the United States has facilitated the return of over 100 priceless antiquities.”
A teenage girl was arrested on Saturday for allegedly killing a man at a hotel in Toyama Prefecture in central Japan, police said.
The 17-year-old has admitted to killing 21-year-old Kazuki Izumoto, saying she “strangled” him to death, according to the police. The two are believed to have known each other.
The girl, whose name is withheld because she is a minor, made an emergency call at around 8:45 p.m. on Friday to report the incident that took place in a hotel in Takaoka.
Izumoto was taken to a hospital where he was confirmed dead.
FILE - Raccoon dogs are seen at a cage in Tokyo's Ueno zoo Saturday, May 24, 2003. (AP Photo/Chika Tsukumo, File)
BEIJING (AP) — Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, suggesting the pandemic may have originated from animals, not a lab, international experts say.
Other experts have not yet verified their analysis, which has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal. How the coronavirus began sickening people remains uncertain. The sequences will have to be matched to the genetic record of how the virus evolved to see which came first.
“These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.
He criticized China for not sharing the genetic information earlier, telling a press briefing that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”
FILE – The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, sits closed in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province on Jan. 21, 2020.(AP Photo/Dake Kang, File)
The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan seafood market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019.
Tedros said the genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
They were then removed, but not before a French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that’s looking into the origins of the coronavirus.
The data show that some of the COVID-positive samples collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes, indicating the animals may have been infected by the virus, according to the scientists. Their analysis was first reported in The Atlantic.
“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in analyzing the data. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”
FILE – A view of the P4 lab inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology is seen after a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
The canines, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China.
Ray Yip, an epidemiologist and founding member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control office in China, said the findings are significant, even though they aren’t definitive.
“The market environmental sampling data published by China CDC is by far the strongest evidence to support animal origins,” Yip told the AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.
WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, cautioned that the analysis did not find the virus within any animal, nor did it find any hard evidence that any animals infected humans.
“What this does provide is clues to help us understand what may have happened,” she said. The international group also told WHO they found DNA from other animals as well as raccoon dogs in the samples from the seafood market, she added.
“There’s molecular evidence that animals were sold at Huanan market and that is new information,” Van Kerkhove said.
FILE – In this file photo dated Sunday, Jan. 31, 2021, security personnel clear the way for a convoy of the World Health Organization team to enter the Huanan Seafood Market. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
Efforts to determine the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have been complicated by factors including the massive surge of human infections in the pandemic’s first two years and an increasingly bitter political dispute.
It took virus experts more than a dozen years to pinpoint the animal origin of SARS, a related virus.
Goldstein and his colleagues say their analysis is the first solid indication that there may have been wildlife infected with the coronavirus at the market. But it is also possible that humans brought the virus to the market and infected the raccoon dogs, or that infected humans simply happened to leave traces of the virus near the animals.
After scientists in the group contacted the China CDC, they say, the sequences were removed from the global virus database. Researchers are puzzled as to why data on the samples collected over three years ago wasn’t made public sooner. Tedros has pleaded with China to share more of its COVID-19 research data.
Gao Fu, the former head of the Chinese CDC and lead author of the Chinese paper, didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press email requesting comment. But he told Science magazine the sequences are “nothing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down.”
Goldstein said his group presented its findings this week to an advisory panel the WHO has tasked with investigating COVID-19’s origins.
Mark Woolhouse, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Edinburgh, said it will be crucial to see how the raccoon dogs’ genetic sequences match up to what’s known about the historic evolution of the COVID-19 virus. If the dogs are shown to have COVID and those viruses prove to have earlier origins than the ones that infected people, “that’s probably as good evidence as we can expect to get that this was a spillover event in the market.”
After a weeks-long visit to China to study the pandemic’s origins, WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most probably jumped into humans from animals, dismissing the possibility of a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.”
But the U.N. health agency backtracked the following year, saying “key pieces of data” were still missing. And Tedros has said all hypotheses remain on the table.
The China CDC scientists who previously analyzed the Huanan market samples published a paper as a preprint in February suggesting that humans brought the virus to the market, not animals, implying that the virus originated elsewhere. Their paper didn’t mention that animal genes were found in the samples that tested positive.
Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected, is home to several labs involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling theories that the virus may have leaked from one.
In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree, believing it more likely it first came from animals. Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.
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DAKE KANG reported from Beijing and MARIA CHENG reported from London.
FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, gestures while speaking to Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Sept. 16, 2022. (Sergei Bobylev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
WASHINGTON (MATTHEW LEE AP Diplomatic Writer) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week highlighted China’s aspirations for a greater role on the world stage. But they also revealed the perils of global diplomacy: Hours after Friday’s announcement of the trip, an international arrest warrant was issued for Putin on war crimes charges, taking at least some wind out of the sails of China’s big reveal.
The flurry of developments — which followed China’s brokering of an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to resume diplomatic relations and its release of what it calls a “peace plan” for Ukraine — came as the Biden administration watches warily Beijing’s moves to assert itself more forcefully in international affairs.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday he believes the decision by the International Criminal Court in The Hague to charge Putin was “justified.” Speaking to reporters as he left the White House for his Delaware home, he said Putin “clearly committed war crimes.”
While the U.S. does not recognize the court, Biden said it “makes a very strong point” to call out the Russian leader for his actions in ordering the invasion of Ukraine.
Other U.S. officials privately expressed satisfaction that an international body had agreed with Washington’s assessment that Russia has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
Asked about the Xi-Putin meeting, Biden said, “Well, we’ll see when that meeting takes place.”
The Biden administration believes China’s desire to be seen as a broker for peace between Russia and Ukraine may be viewed more critically now that Putin is officially a war crime suspect, according to two U.S. officials. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the matter publicly, said the administration hopes the warrants will help mobilize heretofore neutral countries to weigh in on the conflict.
A look at the Xi-Putin meeting and how it may be affected by the warrant.
FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin enter a hall for talks in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 5, 2019. China said Friday, March 17, 2023, (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, File)
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF XI MEETING WITH PUTIN?
The visit to Russia will be Xi’s first foreign trip since being elected to an unprecedented third term as China’s president. It comes as Beijing and Moscow have intensified ties in steps that began shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a meeting between the two leaders in Beijing during last year’s Winter Olympics at which they declared a “no limits” partnership.
Since then, China has repeatedly sided with Russia in blocking international action against Moscow for the Ukraine conflict and, U.S. officials say, is considering supplying Russia with weapons to support the war. But it has also tried to cast itself in a more neutral role, offering a peace plan that was essentially ignored.
The meeting in Moscow is likely to see the two sides recommit to their partnership, which both see as critical to countering what they consider undue and undeserved influence exerted by the U.S. and its Western allies.
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ICC ARREST WARRANT ISSUED FOR PUTIN?
In the immediate term, the ICC’s warrant for Putin and one of his aides is unlikely to have a major impact on the meeting or China’s position toward Russia. Neither China nor Russia — nor the United States or Ukraine — has ratified the ICC’s founding treaty. The U.S., beginning with the Clinton administration, has refused to join the court, fearing that its broad mandate could result in the prosecution of American troops or officials.
That means that none of the four countries formally recognizes the court’s jurisdiction or is bound by its orders, although Ukraine has consented to allowing some ICC probes of crimes on its territory and the U.S. has cooperated with ICC investigations.
In addition, it is highly unlikely that Putin would travel to a country that would be bound by obligations to the ICC. If he did, it is questionable whether that country would actually arrest him. There is precedent for those previously indicted, notably former Sudanese President Omar Bashir, to have visited ICC members without being detained.
However, the stain of the arrest warrant could well work against China and Russia in the court of public opinion and Putin’s international status may take a hit unless the charges are withdrawn or he is acquitted.
WHAT IS THE VIEW FROM WASHINGTON?
U.S. officials have not minced words when it comes to Xi’s planned visit to Moscow. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called Beijing’s push for an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine a “ratification of Russian conquest” and warned that Russians could use a cease-fire to regroup their positions “so that they can restart attacks on Ukraine at a time of their choosing.”
“We do not believe that this is a step towards a just, durable peace,” he said. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan this week called on Xi to also speak with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian leader has also expressed interest in talks with Xi.
WHAT IS THE VIEW FROM KYIV?
Speaking before the ICC warrant was unveiled, Ukrainian analysts cautioned against falling into a potential trap ahead of the Xi-Putin meeting. “We need to be aware that such peace talks are a trap for Ukraine and its diplomatic corps,” said Yurii Poita, who heads the Asia section at the Kyiv-based New Geopolitics Research Network.
“Under such conditions, these peace talks won’t be directed toward peace,” said Nataliia Butyrska, a Ukrainian analyst on politics related to Eastern Asia. She said the visit reflects not so much China’s desire for peace but its desire to play a major role in whatever post-conflict settlement may be reached.
“China does not clearly distinguish between who is the aggressor and who is the victim. And when a country begins its peacekeeping activities or at least seeks to help the parties, not distinguishing this will affect objectivity,” Butyrska said. “From my perspective, China seeks to freeze the conflict.”
FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for a photo on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Sept. 15, 2022. (Alexandr Demyanchuk, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
WHAT IS THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW?
Even if China stops short of providing military assistance to Russia as the U.S. and its allies fear, Moscow sees Xi’s visit as a powerful signal of Chinese backing that challenges Western efforts to isolate Russia and deal crippling blows to its economy.
Kremlin spokesman Yuri Ushakov noted that Putin and Xi have “very special friendly and trusting personal ties” and hailed Beijing’s peace plan. “We highly appreciate the restrained, well-balanced position of the Chinese leadership on this issue,” Ushakov said.
Observers say that despite China’s posturing as a mediator, its refusal to condemn the Russian action leaves no doubt about where Beijing’s sympathy lies.
“The Chinese peace plan is a fig leaf to push back against some Western criticism on support for Russia,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The optics that it creates is that China has a peace plan, both parties of war endorsed it and were ready to explore the opportunities and then it was killed by the hostile West.”
WHAT IS THE VIEW FROM BEIJING?
Chinese officials have been boasting about their new-found clout in the international arena as their country’s foreign policy has become increasingly assertive under Xi.
In announcing the Xi visit, China’s foreign ministry said Beijing’s ties with Moscow are a significant world force. “As the world enters a new period of turbulence and change, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and an important power, the significance and influence of China-Russia relations go far beyond the bilateral scope,” it said.
It called the visit “a journey of friendship, further deepening mutual trust and understanding between China and Russia, and consolidating the political foundation and public opinion foundation of friendship between the two peoples for generations.”
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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed to this report.
