Insurgents killed at least 58 people in a wave of attacks against Iraqi security forces yesterday, gunning down soldiers at an army post and bombing police recruits waiting in line to apply for jobs, officials said.
The violence, which struck at least 11 cities and also wounded nearly 240 people, highlighted militant attempts to sow havoc in the country and undermine the government.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but security forces are a frequent target of al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch, which has vowed to reassert itself and take back areas it was forced from before US troops withdrew from the country last year.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi judge yesterday sentenced fugitive Iraqi vice president Tareq al-Hashemi to death by hanging for the murder of a lawyer and a brigadier general, a correspondent reported.
Hashemi, tried in absentia, has dismissed all charges against him as politically motivated. His secretary and son-in-law, Ahmed Qahtan, was also tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
The trial, which began in May, covered the first of about 150 charges leveled against Hashemi, one of Iraq’s most senior Sunni officials, and his bodyguards, who have been accused of running a death squad.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
Renewed border fighting between Thailand and Cambodia showed no signs of abating yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people in both countries living in strained conditions as more flooded into temporary shelters. Reporters on the Thai side of the border heard sounds of outgoing, indirect fire yesterday. About 400,000 people have been evacuated from affected areas in Thailand and about 700 schools closed while fighting was ongoing in four border provinces, said Thai Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesman for the military. Cambodia evacuated more than 127,000 villagers and closed hundreds of schools, the Thai Ministry of Defense said. Thailand’s military announced that
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
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