SOUTH KOREA
North gets second Web link
A state-owned Russian company has opened up a second Internet connection for North Korea, security experts in Seoul said. The activation of the new line from TransTeleCom was first detected on Sunday by analysts at Dyn Research, which monitors global Internet connectivity. The new connection supplements an existing link provided by China Unicom. It gives Pyongyang “significantly more resilience against attacks on their network infrastructure,” said Bryce Boland, the chief technology officer in the Asia-Pacific for cybersecurity firm FireEye. The news comes after the Washington Post reported that the US Cyber Command had carried out attacks against hackers in the North aimed at cutting off their access to the Internet.
NIGER
US commandos killed
US officials said three US Army special operations commandos were killed on Wednesday and two others were wounded when they came under fire in the southwest of the nation. The officials said the two wounded were taken to Niamey, the capital, and are in stable condition. They said the commandos were likely attacked by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb militants. The US Africa Command said the forces were with a joint US and Nigerien patrol near the Mali border when they came under fire.
JAPAN
Search on for fishermen
Three coastguard patrol boats yesterday were searching for 12 crew members of a Chinese fishing boat that collided with a Hong Kong tanker. Coastguards said they received a report of the collision from their Chinese counterparts yesterday morning saying that 12 of the 16 people on fishing vessel were missing and asking for help. The collision occurred 400km north of the Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, officials said. The tanker’s crew were believed to be safe, a coastguard official said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Request to die rejected
The High Court yesterday rejected a terminally ill man’s request to die with medical help. Three judges turned down a request from 67-year-old Noel Conway, who has motor neurone disease and has been given less than six months to live. He had applied to the court in July, asking for a declaration that the outlawing of suicide is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Conway said he was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling and would appeal. He said that since he was now no longer well enough to travel abroad to obtain assisted suicide in Switzerland, his only option now was to die by suffocation, by removing his ventilator himself.
UNITED STATES
Vandals damage memorial
A memorial in Ohio honoring the nation’s 25th president, William McKinley, has been vandalized again. The Canton Repository reports someone unbolted two bronze window covers from the base of the McKinley National Memorial in Canton last weekend, but left the heavy covers behind. The memorial contains the remains of McKinley, his wife and their two daughters.
CARIBBEAN
Tropical depression forms
A tropical depression developing off Nicaragua is expected to dump heavy rains on parts of Central America before strengthening into a hurricane that could touch Mexico and eventually reach the US, the US National Hurricane Centersaid. Mexico issued a hurricane watch for Quintana Roo state.
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