RUSSIA
Rival leader’s firm targeted
The Ministry of Justice on Monday said it had filed a lawsuit to shut down a company used by opposition leader Alexei Navalny that is being used to finance his political campaigning. The ministry said it asked a Moscow court to close the Fifth Season of the Year foundation, which rents premises for Navalny’s headquarters and employs campaign workers, over unspecified violations. The court is set to consider it on Monday next week.
UNITED STATES
Kushner told of China link
Counterintelligence officials early last year had warned US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that Chinese-born businesswoman Wendi Deng Murdoch (鄧文迪) might be using their friendship to benefit Chinese government interests, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Citing unidentified sources, the Journal said US officials were also concerned that the ex-wife of media magnate Rupert Murdoch was lobbying to push a major Chinese-funded construction project in Washington, which intelligence officials consider a national security risk, because it features a 21m tower that could be used for surveillance. A spokesman said Wendi Deng Murdoch “has no knowledge of any FBI concerns or other intelligence agency concerns relating to her or her associations.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Russia bombers intercepted
The Royal Air Force (RAF) on Monday scrambled two fighter jets to intercept Russian strategic bombers near the nation’s airspace. The RAF confirmed that it sent Typhoon aircraft from the Lossiemouth base in Scotland on a “quick reaction alert” as two Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack bombers approached Britain. “The Russian aircraft were initially monitored by a variety of friendly nation fighters and subsequently intercepted by the RAF in the North Sea,” the RAF said. The Russian Ministry of Defense said the pair of bombers flew over the Barents, Norwegian and North seas during a 13-hour training mission that covered neutral waters, in line with international norms.
UNITED KINGDOM
Dog noted for WWII bravery
A US Army dog that attacked a machine-gun nest during World War II was on Monday posthumously awarded the nation’s highest honor for animal bravery. Chips, a German shepherd-husky cross, was awarded the Dickin Medal for actions during a 1943 beach landing in Sicily. According to the US soldiers, Chips raced into an Italian machine-gun nest, attacking an enemy soldier by the throat and pulling the gun from its mount. Chips suffered scalp wounds and powder burns in the battle, but survived the war, returning to his owners in Pleasantville, New York.
GERMANY
Auschwitz guard appeal fails
A 96-year-old former guard at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp has asked authorities not to jail him, despite losing a court challenge against his sentence. Oskar Groening has filed a formal “request for mercy” with prosecutors in Lueneburg, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice in Lower Saxony State said on Monday. The constitutional court late last month ruled that Groening must serve out his four-year sentence as an accessory to the murders of 300,000 people, rejecting defenders’ argument that imprisonment at such an advanced age would violate his “right to life.” Groening became known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” for his role as an accountant, sorting and counting money collected from people killed or used as slave labor. He confessed his “moral guilt” ahead of his 2015 conviction.
AUSTRALIA
Intuition credited for rescue
The father of a teenager who spent 30 hours trapped in a car wreck in the woods yesterday said he had followed his intuition by hiring the helicopter that found his seriously injured son. Samuel Lethbridge, 17, remained in intensive care in a hospital with multiple fractures two days after the crash. Tony Lethbridge said he suspected his son might have been in a car wreck when he did not return home after a Saturday night out with friends in Newcastle. The father hired a helicopter on Monday morning and the car was spotted in scrub off a highway 20km from home about 15 minutes into the flight. Lee Mitchell, pilot and part-owner of Skyline Aviation Group at Lake Macquarie, said he discounted his usual helicopter hire rate when the father explained his plight.
HONG KONG
Man charged with murders
A South Korean man yesterday was formally charged with murdering his wife and six-year-old son at the five-star Ritz-Carlton hotel on Sunday. Kim Min-ho, 42, was arrested after police found the bodies of his wife, Song Wha-jeong, 42, and son, Kim Tae-yun, in a suite at the hotel. A lawyer for Kim requested that the case be adjourned till Jan. 30 to allow time to obtain psychiatric reports to see whether he is fit to stand trial. He will remain in custody until then.
JAPAN
Alert over fugu foul-up
The central city of Gamagori yesterday activated an emergency warning system to alert residents to avoid eating locally purchased blowfish, after a mix-up saw toxic parts of the delicacy go on sale. A supermarket sold five packages of fugu fish without removing the livers, which can contain tetrodotoxin. Three of the packages have been located, but the other two remain at large, local official Koji Takayanagi said. “We are calling for residents to avoid eating fugu, using Gamagori city’s emergency wireless system,” which broadcasts over loudspeakers around the city, he said.
KOSOVO
Serb leader assassinated
Kosovan Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic, who was awaiting trial over the killings of ethnic Albanians during the 1998-1999 war, was shot dead yesterday outside his party office in the northern town of Mitrovica, a state prosecutor said. Ivanovic had been one of the chief interlocutors for NATO, UN and EU officials based in Kosovo after the war. He was found guilty in 2016 of war crimes linked to the killings of four ethnic Albanians during the war and was jailed for nine years. However, he was released last year after a retrial was ordered. Serbia said it would quit the EU-sponsored dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina on the normalization of relations due to take place in Brussels to protest Ivanovic’s murder.
SOUTH KOREA
Conscripts’ pay doubled
The government yesterday nearly doubled wages for its rank-and-file conscripted soldiers, but their pay will remain just a fraction of the nation’s minimum wage. Salaries for conscripted privates were raised 88 percent from 163,000 won to 306,100 won (US$153 to US$288) a month, with privates first class and corporals enjoying similar increases. However, the minimum wage is 10,000 won per hour. President Moon Jae-in has promised to increase conscripts’ pay to half the minimum wage by 2022. As part of the changes, public servants’ wages yesterday rose an average 2.6 percent, while Moon’s own salary went up 2.27 percent to 225 million won a year.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not