JAPAN
Mount Aso erupts
Mount Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture yesterday sent huge plumes of gray smoke as high as 11km into the air in one of the volcano’s biggest explosions in years. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the explosion also blew off bits of volcanic rock and ash, and raised the alert level for the area, extending the entry ban from just around the volcanic mouth to the mountain itself. Nobody lives within the area and there were no reports of injuries or damage in the area still recovering from deadly earthquakes earlier this year. Mount Aso has repeated smaller eruptions in recent years. The agency said the volcano could erupt again. The country sits atop the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire” and has more than 100 volcanoes.
INDONESIA
Missing teens feared dead
Seven teenagers were feared dead yesterday, a day after they went missing when their boat capsized on a river, officials said. None have been found despite a major rescue operation. The wooden boat was carrying 25 Islamic boarding school male students across the Solo River on Java when it capsized early on Friday. Officials said they suspected overloading caused the boat to tilt. “They were about to reach land, about 7m away or so, but the kids, probably from overexcitement, came to the front of the boat, making the boat unbalance,” said Suprapto, a local disaster management official. The missing passengers were aged between 12 and 19. Eighteen other passengers survived, Suprapto added. Scores of rescuers were deployed to search the river using inflatable boats soon after the accident, but none of the missing teenagers have been found.
MOROCCO
PJD leads in national poll
The Muslim party which has headed Morocco’s coalition government since the “Arab Spring” uprising five years ago beat liberal rivals in parliamentary elections on Friday, according to official partial results. The Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) took 99 seats while the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) — which had campaigned against the “Islamization” of Moroccan society — took 80 with 90 percent of the vote counted, the Ministry of the Interior said. Minister of the Interior Mohamed Hassad said the election was “transparent” and had gone well, rejecting accusations of voter fraud from both sides. The PJD earlier issued a statement saying it was “very concerned about numerous reports of fraud being carried out by authorities” in favor of the PAM, and called on the ministry to “urgently intervene.” PAM spokesman Khalid Adennoun declined to comment.
TURKEY
Militants kill themselves
Two militants yesterday detonated explosives, killing themselves in a remote area near Ankara, after police called on them to surrender, CNN Turk and other broadcasters reported. The militants, believed to be a male and female, were suspected of being linked to the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) group and were believed to have been in possession of plastic explosives and 200kg of ammonium nitrate, CNN Turk said. It said a third person was being sought. The state-run Anadolu Agency said the two militants were preparing to carry out a car bomb attack when the blast occurred in countryside on the road from Ankara to the town of Haymana. The PKK has fought a three-decade insurgency, focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country, in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing