Anti-monarchists

UK police drew condemnation after arresting leading members of the anti-monarchy group Republic as they prepared to protest along the route of a procession for the coronation of King Charles III on Saturday.

A US F-16 fighter jet crashed in a farming area south of Seoul during a training exercise on Saturday, said the US military, but appeared to have caused no casualties or property damage.

The jet’s pilot safely ejected before the crash and was taken to the nearest hospital, the US Air Force said in a statement.

“An F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 8th Fighter Wing crashed in an agricultural area near Osan Air Base at about 9:45 am” in Gyeonggi province, the statement said.

The crash occurred during a routine training exercise, it said, adding an investigation was underway.

The local fire department was dispatched to the crash site and extinguished the fire, Gyeonggi Governor Kim Dong-yeon said on his Twitter account.

Local media said the crash involved no casualties or damage as it took place in a rural area.

“There are no civilian homes nearby the crash, causing no further damage (other than the jet),” a police official was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency.

Washington is Seoul’s key security ally and stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea to help protect it from the North. AFP

Officers from London’s Metropolitan Police force detained six organisers from the pressure group and seized hundreds of their placards, Republic said, just hours before Charles’s crowning.

Republic chief executive Graham Smith was one of those held before the group had a chance to wave placards declaring “Not my king.”

Some onlookers nearby shouted “free Graham Smith” but others shouted “God save the king” and waved UK flags.

“They won’t tell us why they’ve arrested them or where they’re being held,” a Republic activist told AFP in London’s Trafalgar Square.

The detentions prompted immediate criticism from Human Rights Watch,

FOR THE DISAPPEARED.

which called the arrests “incredibly alarming.”

“This is something you would expect to see in Moscow, not London,” the rights organization’s UK Director, Yasmine Ahmed, said in a statement.

“Peaceful protests allow individuals to hold those in power to account– something the UK government seems increasingly averse to.”

The arrests come just days after UK police forces were controversially granted new anti-protest powers by the government under a new law rushed through this week.

A camera crew from the group Alliance of European Republican Movements was at the scene and asked a senior police officer why the group had been detained.

“They’re under arrest. End of,” the officer told them, walking off, according to footage posted by the group on Twitter.

On its Twitter feed, Republic confirmed the arrests and seizure of placards. “Is

Participants gather at the Take Back the Power mural by artist Greg Deal during a rally supporting Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day in Colorado Springs. The artist of the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe created the 77-foot mural which depicts his daughter Sage Deal with a red handprint on her face, referencing missing or murdered indigenous persons.

Violence against the Native American population is highly underreported. AFP this democracy?” it asked.

arrested in London US F-16 jet crashes during Sokor training

Smith told reporters last week: “We certainly have no plans to disrupt the actual procession.”

Waving placards and shouting would show “in front of the world’s press that we are not a country of loyalists, that there is a growing opposition,” the Republic founder said.

The new police powers law was enacted after months of disruptive tactics around Britain by groups opposed to fossil fuels. It entails stiffer jail terms against activists gluing and padlocking themselves to immovable objects.

Separately Saturday, at least 19 members of Just Stop Oil were arrested in central London, the group – which stages disruptive demonstrations – said in a statement.

An AFP reporter saw numerous activists being handcuffed by police on The Mall, the processional route from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square. AFP

US President Joe Biden, who at age 80 is seeking a second term in 2024, said in an interview broadcast Friday that his advanced age has brought him abundant wisdom.

“I have acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom and know more than the vast majority of people,” he told a reporter from MSNBC, the first interview he’s given to the press since officially launching his campaign last week.

“I’m more experienced than anybody that’s ever run for the office. And I think I’ve proven myself to be honorable as well as also effective,” said Biden, a Democrat who would be 86 at the end of a second term. Biden has so far rarely addressed his age, which is considered to be his main handicap among voters, except for the occasional joke.

In 2024, he could once more face Republican Donald Trump, now 76. AFP

Sri Lanka prisoners freed to mark holiday

SRI Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe ordered the early release of nearly 1,000 prisoners to mark the island’s main Buddhist holiday, the prisons chief said Saturday.

The pardons on Vesak Day, which commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death, applied only to those convicted of minor offences, said Commissioner-General Thushara Upuldeniya.

“We released these inmates from 28 prisons across the country,” Upuldeniya told AFP of the Friday evening releases. “There were 982 men and six women who walked free.”

The cash-strapped South Asian nation is holding official Vesak celebrations for the first time in five years. Festivities were cancelled in 2019 after Islamic extremists carried out Easter Sunday suicide bombings that claimed 279 lives at churches and hotels in the capital Colombo. Official events marking the holiday were then put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s economic crisis, the worst since independence from Britain in 1948. AFP