UNITED STATES
Trump defends former aide
President Donald Trump has defended former aide Rob Porter. He is wishing him well in his future endeavors without any mention of Porter’s two former wives who have accused him of physical and emotional abuse. Trump’s comments set off a firestorm at a time of national conversation about the mistreatment of women. And they came amid White House finger-pointing about who knew what, and when, about the severity of the spousal abuse allegations. Trump said Porter, who resigned when the abuse allegations became public this week, had “worked hard” at the White House and wished him well. He gave no nod to the treatment of the women whose reports of abuse led to Porter’s resignation, but which he denies.
SOUTH KOREA
Possible cyberattack probed
Pyeongchang Winter Olympic organizers are investigating a possible attack on their Internet and Wi-Fi systems that took place about 45 minutes before the opening ceremony on Friday. Organizing committee spokeswoman Nancy Park said the Ministry of Defense and a cybersecurity team were investigating the outage. She said the systems were almost back to normal about 15 hours after the problems were discovered. Yonhap news agency reported that servers were shut down to prevent damage to technical systems, causing problems with the Pyeongchang Olympic Web site. Park declined to call it a cyberattack.
UNITED STATES
Memo to stay classified
The White House has told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that President Donald Trump is “unable” to declassify a memo drafted by Democrats about abuse of government surveillance powers in the FBI’s Russia probe. The memo is a response to a Republican memo alleging abuse of those surveillance powers. White House counsel Don McGahn said in a letter to the committee that the memo contains “numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages” and asked the intelligence panel to revise the memo with the help of the Department of Justice.
INDONESIA
Evacuees allowed home
Thousands of people who were forced to evacuate their houses in Bali because of a rumbling volcano can now return home, authorities said yesterday as they lowered Mount Agung’s alert level. The volcano, about 75km from Kuta, has been periodically spewing molten clouds of ash and smoke for months, forcing more than 100,000 people to flee the area and prompting the closure of the island’s international airport. The Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation lowered Agung’s alert level from four to three, citing a decline in its activity.
THAILAND
Arrest warrants issued
A court on Friday issued arrest warrants for four pro-democracy activists for staging a public protest amid growing pressure on the junta to hold elections as promised, police said. Rangsiman Rome, Sirawich Seritiwat, Ekachai Hongkangwan and Anond Nampa were charged with illegal assembly along with 35 other activists who staged a demonstration last month in Bangkok to protest against a delay to a general election scheduled to take place in November. The 35 reported to police on Thursday and were released the same day. The other four did not report to police. They face additional charges of breaking a junta order that bans public gatherings.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The