France Reclaims Title: World's Largest Wine Maker

It wasn’t so long ago that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his country’s relationship with China “a marriage made in heaven.” And when Biden told reporters in March 2023 that he was not inviting Netanyahu to Washington given his plans to undermine Israel’s independent judiciary, Netanyahu announced a trip to visit President Xi Jinping in China instead.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The Philippine military denounced China’s latest actions in the hotly disputed South China Sea, saying that a confrontation earlier this week resulted in a Filipino navy serviceman losing a finger. In a press conference Wednesday, Alfonso Torres Jr., commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Western Command, said China Coast Guard personnel “illegally boarded” Philippine rubber boats that were conducting a routine resupply mission to the BRP Sierra Madre, a grounded vessel at the Second Thomas Shoal, on Monday. Torres said the Chinese also “looted” seven of the Philippine navy’s rifles, which were disassembled inside gun cases and were supposed to be for Filipino servicemen stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre, which has functioned as an outpost to maintain the Philippines’ claim to the shoal. Eight Philippine navy personnel reportedly sustained injuries, though the military has only confirmed one victim: a sailor whose right thumb got severed after the China Coast Guard reportedly rammed the Philippine boats. “Because of the speed, the forward portion of the China Coast Guard’s RHIB [rigid-hull inflatable boat] landed on top of our troop’s RHIB, and unfortunately our troop’s hand was there,” Torres said.

MOSCOW — A court in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok on Wednesday sentenced an American soldier arrested earlier this year to three years and nine months in prison on charges of stealing and threats of murder, Russian news reports said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, flew to Vladivostok, a Pacific port city, to see his girlfriend and was arrested after she accused him of stealing from her, according to U.

Former U. S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused China of trying to erase Tibetan culture following her high-profile meeting with the Dalai Lama at his home in northern India Wednesday, a visit condemned by Beijing. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Pelosi was joined on the trip to Dharamshala by a bipartisan delegation led by Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

TOKYO — Kazuko Shiraishi, a leading name in modern Japanese “beat” poetry, known for her dramatic readings, at times with jazz music, has died. She was 93. Shiraishi, whom American poet and translator Kenneth Rexroth dubbed “the Allen Ginsberg of Japan,” died of heart failure on June 14, Shichosha, a Tokyo publisher of her works, said Wednesday. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Shiraishi shot to fame when she was just 20, freshly graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo, with her “Tamago no Furu Machi,” translated as “The Town that Rains Eggs”—a surrealist portrayal of Japan’s wartime destruction. With her trademark long black hair and theatrical delivery, she defied historical stereotypes of the silent, non-assertive Japanese woman. “I have never been anything like pink,” Shiraishi wrote in her poem. It ends: “The road / where the child became a girl / and finally heads for dawn / is broken.” Shiraishi counted Joan Miro, Salvador Dali and John Coltrane among her influences.

It must be somebody pretty important in your life to warrant a personal airport pickup at 3 a.m. But that’s the honor North Korean “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un paid to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning, greeting the Russian President on a red carpet-laid runway in the wee hours and then riding with him through Pyongyang streets festooned with roses and murals of his stout, balding guest, whom Kim had earlier hailed as an “invincible comrade-in-arms.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The last time Putin visited North Korea, it was his first year as Russian President and Kim was still ensconced under a fake name at a Swiss boarding school.