SOUTH KOREA
PM to attend enthronement
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon plans to visit Japan next week to attend Emperor Naruhito’s enthronement ceremony on behalf of President Moon Jae-in, Yonhap news agency said, citing presidential officials. Lee is likely to hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which would be the highest-level dialogue since tension flared up last year over the issue of Japan’s wartime use of Korean forced labor, Yonhap said. “We hope his visit would help improve relations,” an unidentified presidential official was quoted as saying by Yonhap.
PAKISTAN
Khan visiting Iran
Prime Minister Imran Khan arrived in Iran yesterday after a request from the US and Saudi Arabia for him to try to defuse rising tensions in the Persian Gulf. Khan’s office said his visit, the second this year, was part of an initiative “to promote peace and security in the region,” and that he was scheduled to hold talks with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. He is then expected to visit Saudi Arabia, but no details of that visit have been released.
MYANMAR
Hostages seized from bus
Suspected ethnic Rakhine rebels disguised as a sports team stormed a bus and took 31 hostages — mostly off-duty firefighters and construction workers — officials said yesterday. The state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar said the bus — travelling to the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe — was flagged down by a man dressed in civilian attire before 18 rebels in sportswear emerged from the forest and ordered the passengers off at gunpoint. “We are still following them,” Colonel Win Zaw Oo said, adding the insurgents might have mistaken the firemen for troops.
BURKINA FASO
Attack on mosque kills 16
Armed men on Friday evening stormed the Grand Mosque in the northern town of Salmossi, killing 16 people and sending residents fleeing, security sources and locals said on Saturday. One source said 13 people died on the spot and three succumbed to their injuries later. Two of the wounded were critical condition. “Since this morning, people have started to flee the area,” one resident from the nearby town of Gorom-Gorom said. He said there was a “climate of panic despite military reinforcements” that were deployed after the attack.
EGYPT
Shelling kills family
A shell hit a truck carrying civilians in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, killing at least nine people from one family, security officials and medics said. The shell exploded in the small town of Bir al-Abd and at least six others were wounded and taken to a hospital, they said. The family was returning home from their olive farm, two local residents said. Meanwhile, seven members of security forces were wounded on Saturday when two explosive devices hit armored vehicles in Bir al-Abd and the town of Rafah near the border with the Gaza Strip.
AFGHANISTAN
Two officials slain
Taliban insurgents on Saturday shot and killed a government official from eastern Maidan Wardak Province in Kabul, Maidan Wardak governor’s spokesman Mohibullah Sharifzai said yesterday. Raz Mohammad was the chief of Jaghatu district. In Parwan Province, a provincial appeal court’s prosecutor was shot and killed on Saturday by unknown gunmen in the capital Charakar, local police chief Mohfoz Walizada said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of