JAPAN
Abe reshuffles Cabinet
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday reshuffled his Cabinet, retaining key diplomatic and economic posts as the nation tackles tough trade talks with the US. The reshuffle, Abe’s fourth since taking office in 2012, kept Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono, Minister of Finance Taro Aso, Minister of State for Economic Revitalization Toshimitsu Motegi and Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko — core members of his government who have worked on tough negotiations on trade and other issues with their US counterparts. For minister of defense, Abe appointed Takeshi Iwaya, a ruling party national security expert who is expected to follow the ongoing policy seeking a greater military role. Abe renewed more than half of the 19 Cabinet members and added some of his confidants to help his push for a constitutional revision, although hurdles remain high.
ITALY
Helpful mayor arrested
The mayor of a small town in Calabria who has become a symbol for welcoming migrants has been placed under house arrest for allegedly aiding illegal immigration. Financial police arrested Riace Mayor Domenico Lucano early yesterday as part of an investigation that news agency ANSA reported was spurred by the allocation of government funds for refugees and asylum seekers. Sky TG24 reported that accusations include organizing marriages of convenience so immigrants could remain legally. Lucano gained fame for welcoming migrants, hundreds of whom have settled in the small town of fewer than 2,000 inhabitants.
PHILIPPINES
Mayor, two others killed
Gunmen have killed a town mayor and two other people, and wounded the vice mayor in the latest brazen attack on local officials, police said yesterday. Alexander Buquing, mayor of Sudipen in La Union province, his driver and a police officer were killed on Monday night. A senator called for an investigation on the killings of several mayors. The vice mayor, who is also Buquing’s wife, was not hit, but was injured in the attack that occurred while the group was heading home. National police spokesman Chief Superintendent Benigno Durana said investigators were trying to determine the motive and identify the attackers.
PAKISTAN
Court clears assets sales
A court has ruled to allow Punjab’s provincial government to auction off assets of former minister of finance Ishaq Dar, who is hiding from the law and has failed to answer repeated court summons. Dar faces charges of concealing financial assets at home and abroad. He has been reportedly staying in London for more than a year. Judge Mohammed Bashir of the anti-graft tribunal yesterday ruled that the Punjab government can keep in its possession all Dar’s seized assets. The Supreme Court last year ruled that Dar possessed more than 830 million rupees (US$6.73 million) in assets, far more than his declared sources of income.
TURKEY
Laundering suspects nabbed
Anadolu Agency reported that prosecutors yesterday issued detention warrants against 417 people suspected of illegally transferring 2.5 billion Turkish lira (US$414.49 million) to thousands of bank accounts abroad. It said that 216 money-laundering suspects were detained in raids conducted in about 40 provinces. The suspects had received commissions for transferring money to 28,088 banks accounts abroad, most of which belonged to Iranians based in the US, it said.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.