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the film — recorded by police as a security measure — all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the images were a “historical document.”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.
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