AFGHANISTAN
Taliban attack checkpoint
The Taliban attacked a checkpoint in Ghazni Province, killing at least 13 soldiers and policemen, a spokesman for the provincial governor said yesterday. Arif Noori said seven soldiers, six policemen and six insurgents were killed, while four soldiers are more than 10 rebels were wounded in the early morning attack. Noori said the checkpoint had just been set up two days ago to cut off a supply route for the Taliban. The Taliban is also demanding the body of an assassin who shot dead a powerful police chief on Oct. 18 in return for the remains of 13 people killed in an army helicopter crash on Oct. 31. Only 12 of the 25 people killed in the crash have been turned over to authorities so far.
MALAYSIA
Ex-Sabah leader indicted
Former chief minister of Sabah Musa Aman was yesterday charged with allegedly receiving bribes for the award of timber concessions. He was detained by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission before being taken to court, where he pleaded not guilty to 35 counts of corruption for allegedly receiving a total of US$63.3 million in Hong Kong and Singapore through proxies between 2004 and 2008 in exchange for timber contracts. He was released on bail and faces up to 20 years in jail for each offense if convicted.
PAKISTAN
Twitter suspends TLP cleric
Twitter on Sunday suspended the account of an ultra-right cleric following inflammatory statements targeting the judiciary, prime minister and military after the acquittal of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy who had spent eight years on death row, the government said. Cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) party blocked off roads in Lahore for three days last week and threatened the Supreme Court judges who acquitted Asia Bibi on Wednesday — urging their cooks and servants to kill them. The TLP condemned the suspension of Rizvi’s account, terming it a “conspiracy by the opponents of the protection of prophethood and Islam.” A second account that was created on Sunday was also suspended soon after.
INDIA
Air quality drops sharply
Air quality in the haze-hit north of the country, including New Delhi, deteriorated sharply yesterday because of unfavorable weather and an increase in smoke from stubble burning in fields across the region. Levels of PM2.5 — fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller — were above 400 in most parts of the capital, and in some places soared above 600. That is nearly 24 times the WHO’s recommended level of 25 micrograms per cubic meter on average over a 24-hour period. Forecasts said worse is to come, as crop residue burning peaks over the next few days, while the Hindu festival of Diwali is to be celebrated tomorrow with celebratory fireworks.
INDIA
Villagers crush tiger
Villagers in the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh state crushed a tigress to death with a tractor after she killed a man, forestry officials said yesterday. The villagers had circled around the tigress after it killed a man late on Sunday. Villagers said the tiger had also injured a youth about 10 days ago. The village is in the core zone of the reserve. Killing a tiger in protected areas is illegal, and reserve director Ramesh Pandey said a case under the Wildlife Protection Act would be registered with police against the offenders.
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,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the