SINGAPORE
Malaysian port plan decried
The government has made a “strong protest” to Malaysia over its plan to extend the limits of a port in its southernmost state, saying that it encroached its territorial waters. The Ministry of Transport said it had asked Kuala Lumpur to reverse steps to change the port’s limits to reflect the city-state’s sovereignty in the area. Malaysian Minister of Transport Anthony Loke Siew Fook yesterday said those claims were inaccurate, adding: “The altered port limits of Johor Bahru Port are in Malaysia’s territorial sea and it is well within Malaysia’s right to draw any port limit in our territorial sea.”
INDONESIA
Mass killers hunted
Soldiers yesterday hunted for rebels suspected of killing as many as 31 construction workers in restive Papua Province. About 150 military personnel were focusing their operation at Nduga, a remote mountainous region where a state-owned contractor has been building bridges and roads. Many Papuans view Indonesia as a colonial occupier and its building work as a way to exert more control over an impoverished region. “I have ordered the chiefs of the military and national police to chase and arrest all the perpetrators of these barbaric and inhumane acts,” President Joko Widodo said in Jakarta.
CHINA
Human rights official visits
Germany’s top official for human rights was due to arrive in Tibet yesterday for a dialogue with officials after being denied permission to visit the heavily policed region of Xinjiang. German Human Rights Commissioner Barbel Kofler said she had wanted to travel to Xinjiang, where an estimated 1 million members of the Turkic Muslim Uighur minority have been held in political re-education camps. Kofler said that conditions in Tibet give her “great cause for concern” due to restrictions on traditional Buddhist culture and “excessive controls.” She is to hold talks today and tomorrow.
UKRAINE
Russian threat is building
Russia has since August been building up its forces near the border of the two countries and poses the greatest military threat since 2014, the year Moscow annexed Crimea, the commander of the nation’s armed forces said in an interview on Tuesday. General Viktor Muzhenko gestured to a series of satellite images that he said showed the presence of Russian tanks stationed 18km from the border. They increased from 93 machines to 250 during the last half of September. “It is very difficult to predict when it will occur to him to begin active combat actions against Ukraine,” Muzhenko said.
ALGERIA
Slain monks to be beatified
The Catholic Church on Saturday plans to beatify seven French monks and 12 other clergy killed during the nation’s civil war, the first ceremony of its kind in a Muslim nation. The Trappist monks were abducted by gunmen in March 1996 and their severed heads discovered two months later. Beatification is the first step on the path to Roman Catholic sainthood. Archbishop of Algiers Paul Desfarges said the ceremony would highlight the dedication of men and women who remained during the violence. “They did not hesitate to risk their lives because the most important thing for them was their relationship with others, rather than protecting themselves,” he said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Gay filmmaker wins prize
An openly gay Scottish artist who celebrated queer lives in a short film shot on an iPhone on Tuesday won Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize. Charlotte Prodger came out on top at a glitzy reception at London’s Tate Museum for a 33-minute visual compilation called BRIDGIT. The jury said Prodger’s work “meanders through disparate associations ranging from JD Sports and standing stones to 1970s lesbian separatism and Jimi Hendrix’s sound recordist.” The 44-year-old Glasgow-based artist said she felt “quite overwhelmed,” adding: “The stories that I am telling, although they are mine and are personal, are stories that a lot of people — well, I guess queer people — have experienced.”
UNITED STATES
Four charged for tax evasion
Federal authorities on Tuesday announced a raft of conspiracy and tax fraud charges against four men in the nation’s first prosecution related to the Panama Papers. The 11-count indictment stems from what prosecutors described as an “intercontinental money-laundering scheme” involving a global law firm based in Panama. Two Germans, one American and a Panamanian attorney were charged with conspiracy and other counts. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said the defendants “shuffled millions of dollars through off-shore accounts” and had “a playbook to repatriate untaxed money into the US banking system.”
UNITED STATES
Einstein letter on God sold
A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein in which the physicist doubted the existence of God was auctioned on Tuesday for US$2.89 million. In the letter, dated 1954 and written in German to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein said he did not believe in God. “The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses,” he wrote. “The Bible, a collection of venerable, but still rather primitive legends.” The letter was last sold in 2008 to a private collector for US$404,000, Christie’s said.
UNITED STATES
Flynn could avoid jail
Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday recommended that former national security adviser Michael Flynn face no jail time due to his “substantial” cooperation with the investigation. Mueller said in a court document that the retired lieutenant general had helped in his and other unspecified federal criminal investigations, including being interviewed 19 times. “Given the defendant’s substantial assistance ... a sentence at the low end of the guideline range — including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration — is appropriate and warranted,” the filing said.
UNITED STATES
Woman kills jail escapee
An inmate who had escaped minutes earlier from a county jail in South Carolina was shot and killed by a woman after he kicked in her back door, Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark said. The inmate was still in his orange jail jumpsuit and had grabbed a knife sharpening tool from the woman’s kitchen in Pickens as he headed toward her bedroom at about 3am on Tuesday, Clark said. “This was a big guy. If she hadn’t had a weapon there’s no telling what would have happened,” he said. “I gave her a big hug. I told her how proud I was of her.” The woman was home alone and had gone through training to get a concealed weapons permit, Clark said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese