NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Immunity lifted: Czech lawmakers agreed Friday to lift the immunity from prosecution for Prime Minister Andrej Babis over alleged fraud involving European Union subsidies. The 111-69 vote in the lower house of parliament allows police to complete their investigation into Babis’ possible involvement in the $2 million fraud. The case involves a farm that received an EU subsidy after its ownership was transferred from a conglomerate of some 250 companies that belonged to Babis to Babis’ family members. The EU farm subsidy was meant for medium and small businesses and Agrofert would not have been eligible for it. Agrofert later took over ownership of the farm again.
_2 Radio station closed: Pakistani authorities on Friday closed the offices of a U.S. government-funded radio station whose broadcasts it said were “against the interests of Pakistan,” dealing another blow to relations with the United States. The Pakistani interior ministry said that Radio Mashaal portrayed the country as “a hub of terrorism” and “a failed state” that could not provide security for its people, particularly religious minorities and long-term refugees from Afghanistan. The Trump administration this month announced that the U.S. would withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance due to Pakistan’s inability to crack down on militant groups that range across the border to attack U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan.
_3 Egypt leader: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi announced he will run for a second, four-year term in elections due in March. The former general made the announcement in televised comments carried live on Friday. Winning the election is virtually a foregone conclusion for el-Sissi, who led the military’s ouster in 2013 of Egypt’s first freely-elected leader, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, before becoming president a year later. None of those who declared their intention to challenge him in the March vote are likely to pose any serious threat to his re-election. Since 2013, el-Sissi has overseen one of the harshest crackdowns in living memory in Egypt, jailing thousands of Islamists and secular activists behind the popular 2011 uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak and curtailing civil liberties.
_4 Cuba tourism: Travel to Cuba is booming from dozens of countries, including the U.S. And the tourism dollars from big-spending Americans seem to be heading into Cuba’s state sector and away from private business, according to Cuban state figures, and private business people. The government figures show that 2017 was a record year for tourism, with 4.7 million visitors pumping more than $3 billion into the island’s otherwise struggling economy. The number of American travelers rose to 619,000. Cuba’s tourism boom began shortly after then-President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced in December 2014 that their countries would re-establish diplomatic relations.
_5 Drone rescue: A flying drone dropped a flotation device to two teens caught in a riptide in heavy seas off the Australian coast in what officials described Friday as the world’s first drone rescue. Monty Greenslade and Gabe Vidler got into trouble on Thursday at Lennox Head, 470 miles north of Sydney. Lifeguard Jai Sheridan piloted the drone, dropping a rescue pod minutes faster than lifeguards could have reached the pair by conventional means.