AUSTRALIA
Caution from security boss
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Duncan Lewis has told politicians from the ruling Liberal-National coalition to tone down their criticism of Islam because it could pose a national security risk, The Australian newspaper reported yesterday. His reported calls came days after an interview with Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, where he stressed that fueling tensions with the Muslim community could hurt the fight against extremism. Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop yesterday said that she supported Lewis’ reported actions.
INDIA
Grisly death at airport
Airport and airline authorities have begun investigating the death of a technician who was sucked into an aircraft engine at an airport in Mumbai. Air India boss Ashwani Lohani said the accident happened when a plane bound from Mumbai to Hyderbad was being pushed back from an airport gate. A pilot misinterpreted a signal and switched on the plane’s engine. The maintenance crew member standing nearby was sucked into the engine and killed instantly.
INDONESIA
Speaker resigns
Setya Novanto on Wednesday quit as parliament speaker over allegations he tried to extort a stake from a US mining giant. Novanto was recorded demanding shares in the local unit of Freeport-McMoRan in exchange for extending the company’s right to operate in the country, claiming that the stake would be divided between President Joko Widodo and the vice president. His resignation came as a parliamentary ethics council investigating the case was wrapping up its probe and appeared ready to strip him of the post.
UNITED STATES
Carter in e-mail flap
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter used a personal e-mail account for some government business in his first months at the Pentagon, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing White House and Department of Defense officials and copies of the e-mails. Carter used his own e-mail account, contrary to department rules, for at least two months after it became public in March that Hillary Rodham Clinton had used only her personal e-mail account while she was secretary of state, the Times quoted the officials as saying.
FRANCE
Le Pen slammed for tweets
National Front leader Marine Le Pen is under investigation after tweeting graphic images of Islamic State atrocities, including a photograph of the decapitated body of US reporter James Foley. The prosecutor’s office in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre on Wednesday said it had launched an investigation. Foley’s parents John and Diane said they wanted the images removed immediately, accusing Le Pen in a statement of using the “shamefully uncensored” image to her own political ends.
UNITED KINGDOM
Man stabs self at Heathrow
A man was taken to hospital after he repeatedly stabbed himself in the head on Wednesday at London’s Heathrow airport, police and media reports said, triggering panic among passengers. A passenger quoted by the Guardian newspaper, Tamara Lynch, said the man was trying to stab himself in the neck, then opened his jacket to try and stab himself in the chest. “There was blood all the way down the side of his face and down his shirt,” she said. Airline employees disarmed the man before security arrived.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema