South Korea has mounted a huge land, sea and air operation to protect Asia-Pacific leaders, deploying over 37,000 personnel and enforcing draconian exclusion zones, officials said yesterday.
A spokesman for the port city of Busan, Steve Tang, said 37,000 officers from South Korea's national intelligence service, police, military, fire service, coast guard and customs were on high alert for the APEC meetings which opened yesterday.
The measures include a no-fly and no-vessel zone within a 7km radius from Nurimaru APEC house, a dome-shaped structure on Busan's coast where APEC leaders will be holding a retreat.
"It's not only the sky but the sea [that] will be guarded," Tang said.
The city's police, who have been on emergency duty since Oct. 19, have been deployed to subway stations to monitor suspicious activities, while garbage bins, potential hiding places for bombs, have been removed.
Body searches are being performed at airports, and at Busan Port's international passenger terminal and subways, while all cargo and mail is being X-rayed, a government statement said.
Coast guard patrol boats and hovercrafts are sweeping the city's coastline, while divers, bomb disposal experts and snipers are taking part in anti-terrorism exercises.
Delegates said nervousness about security had intensified since the hotel bombings in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday, which have been blamed on the al-Qaeda network.
As well as the threat of terrorist attack, the authorities here are also bracing for huge anti-globalization protests aimed to coincide with the APEC summit on Friday and Saturday which will be attended by US President George W. Bush.
More than 40,000 protesters marched against Bush at a summit of the Americas in Argentina last week. Violence erupted when several hundred demonstrators pelted police with rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
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