Several other stories rounded out a busy weekend of global news:
- Taiwan’s defiance: Taiwan’s Foreign Minister, on a visit to Eswatini — one of the island’s few remaining diplomatic allies — declared that Taiwan “will not bow its head” to Chinese pressure. “No unreasonable blockade or pressure can shake our resolve,” he said.
- Pakistan-China ties: President Asif Ali Zardari, on a week-long visit to China, met with CCP officials in Hunan province, expressing interest in closer collaboration on seed technology and agricultural research.
- Ratko Mladić’s plea: The convicted war criminal, serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide at Srebrenica, has requested transfer to Serbia to die. Victims’ associations have firmly rejected the proposal.
- Peru: A massive fire engulfed the National Police’s Technical Training School in Lima’s Puente Piedra district, while authorities identified three of five victims killed in a military operation in the Vraem region of Colcabamba.
- India: Gujarat recorded a 66% turnout in civic elections held amid intense heat, with three deaths reported on polling day, including an AAP candidate. Meanwhile, the National Green Tribunal issued notices to the central government over risks posed by hanging glaciers in the central Himalayas.
The weekend’s events paint a picture of a world in flux — from the gunfire at a Washington gala to the quiet departure of private jets from Vienna, from stalled diplomacy in Islamabad to glacial warnings in the Himalayas. The common thread is instability, and the sense that many of the world’s most consequential actors are improvising their way through crises without clear endgames.
