ECUADOR
Assange lawsuit dismissed
A judge on Monday threw out the lawsuit WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange filed charging that Quito violated his “fundamental rights” and limited his access to the outside world while in asylum at its London embassy. Magistrate Karen Martinez ruled that the suit could not move forward, as filed by WikiLeaks’ attorney, the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon. The 47-year-old Australian’s legal action had come with speculation mounting that Ecuador is preparing to end its standoff with the British government by terminating his high-profile stay. Carlos Poveda, Assange’s lawyer in Ecuador, appealed the ruling. That means a higher court should review the case in coming days.
JAPAN
Beatles superfans lose fight
It has been a hard day’s fight, but a group of Japanese Beatles fans have lost their bid to get police to hand over historic footage of the band’s 1966 Japan visit. The superfans took their battle for the film — recorded by police as a security measure — all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the images were a “historical document.” Police had offered to release the footage, reportedly about 35 minutes long, but only after blurring the faces of everyone in the film except the Beatles, citing privacy reasons. Two lower courts backed the police against a group of citizens from Nagoya, who wanted the entire film released uncensored, saying it would be almost impossible to identify people in the footage more than 50 years later. However, the long and winding legal battle ended last week when the supreme court rejected their argument, the group announced. The Beatles toured Japan only once, playing five concerts, and were trailed across the country by legions of screaming fans.
CHINA
Ex-spy heads top university
Peking University has appointed as its top leader a former head of the national spy agency’s branch in the Chinese capital. Qiu Shuiping’s (邱水平) appointment comes as President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) administration seeks to enforce academic conformity and tighten the Chinese Communist Party’s power over academia and other sectors not under its direct control. The university said in a news release that Qiu aimed as its party secretary to turn it into a “world-class university with Chinese characteristics.” Qiu graduated from Peking University in 1983 with a law degree. His lengthy official resume says that from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014, he was party secretary of Beijing’s State Security Bureau. That is the local branch of the ministry of the same name responsible for espionage and counterespionage.
MALAYSIA
Wife charged with murder
A British woman was yesterday charged with murdering her husband, who was found stabbed to death at their home on Langkawi Island. Lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo said that Samantha Jones, 51, was asked by a court official if she understood the charge, which carries the mandatory death sentence by hanging, and that her client said yes. Police found a blood-stained kitchen knife in the couple’s home, where John William Jones was found dead on Oct. 18. Kaur said Jones did not enter a plea as the magistrate’s court has no jurisdiction to hear a murder case and that the case is expected to be transferred to the high court. She said Jones was “very, very overwhelmed” and grieved for her husband.
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