NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Hungary politics: European Union leaders and Hungarian American billionaire George Soros are seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe,” Hungary’s antimigration leader said Saturday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungary’s border fences will block the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration into Europe. While Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” Orban said Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”
_2 Poland protests: President Andrzej Duda sees flaws in contentious legislation adopted by the Senate that gives politicians significant influence over the nation’s Supreme Court, his spokesman said Saturday. Andrzej Lapinski stopped short of saying whether the president would reject the bill, which was approved by the Senate on Saturday has led to nationwide protests. Democracy icon and ex-President Lech Walesa told protesters Saturday in Gdansk that the separation of powers into three branches was the most important achievement of his Solidarity movement. _3 Drone rules: British officials announced plans Saturday to regulate drone use in a bid to prevent accidents and threats to commercial aviation. The new rules require drones that weigh eight ounces or more to be registered, and users will have to pass a safety awareness exam during the registration process. Pilots have been warning of near misses in recent years as more and more drones have taken to the air.
_4 Death sentences: An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 28 people to death for their involvement in the assassination of the country’s prosecutor general in 2015. Hisham Barakat was the most senior government official killed by Islamic militants since the 2013 military ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president whose one-year rule proved divisive.
_5 Nuclear meltdown: Images captured by an underwater robot Saturday showed large deposits believed to be melted nuclear fuel covering the floor of a damaged reactor at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. On Friday, the robot spotted suspected debris of melted fuel for the first time since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused multiple meltdowns and destroyed the plant. Locating and analyzing the fuel debris and damage in each of the plant’s three wrecked reactors is crucial for decommissioning the plant.