SOUTH KOREA
Police chief quits
National Police Agency chief Cho Hyun-oh resigned yesterday following public fury at a bungled case in which a woman was raped and murdered after frantically calling police for help. Cho said he would step down to “take all responsibility ... for unpardonable carelessness” by the police and asked the victim’s family for forgiveness. “I express my deepest regret at the police’s negligence which had such a horrendous result and attempts to cover it up with lies,” Cho told a press conference. The dismembered body of the 28-year-old woman was found on Monday last week in Suwon about 13 hours after she had called the police emergency number from her home. She gave police a detailed location for her home before the intruder broke in on the evening of April 1. Police admitted miscommunication between the emergency call center and officers on duty, as well as bureaucratic shortcomings, which led them to search the wrong area for hours.
PAKISTAN
Six dead in checkpost raid
About 20 militants attacked a military checkpost in the northwest near the Afghan border, sparking a clash that left two soldiers and four militants dead, an official said yesterday. The attack was beaten off when troops responded with artillery and heavy weapons, a senior paramilitary Frontier Corps official said. “More than 20 militants attacked a Frontier Corps checkpost in the Khapiyanga area of Lower Kurram tribal region on Sunday night, which triggered a firefight, killing two soldiers and four rebels,” the official said.
MALAYSIA
Student ban to be lifted
Lawmakers are expected to approve a plan allowing university students to join political parties. Higher Education Minister Khaled Noordin yesterday tabled a proposal for legal amendments that would lift a decades-old ban on the involvement of university students in politics and allow them to participate in political activities not conducted on campus.Lawmakers are expected to debate and endorse the amendments soon.
MYANMAR
NLD leader to take seat
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will take her seat in parliament for the first time on April 23, her party said yesterday. The veteran dissident’s National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 43 seats in April 1 by-elections, will be the main opposition in a national parliament dominated by the military and its political allies. NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the Nobel laureate would travel to the capital Naypyidaw by April 22 in time to attend a new session of the lower house the following day. Parliament has been in recess since March 23.
PHILIPPINES
Two held over bombings
Police have detained two suspects over bombings on Palawan that wounded three people, a police spokeswoman said yesterday. Two blasts went off nearly simultaneously on Thursday outside a hotel in the El Nido beach resort and a bus depot in the provincial capital Puerto Princesa at the start of peak Easter tourist holiday season. Two suspects were arrested on Sunday, Palawan police spokeswoman Inspector Grace Gomba told reporters. “At first they were reluctant to talk, but they are now cooperating with the police,” she added, without elaborating. The motive for the attack has not been established, and police declined to identify the detained suspects.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion