TURKEY
Dozens face arrest over coup
Prosecutors investigating the military and Ministry of Justice yesterday ordered the arrest of 228 people over suspected links to a network that Ankara says was behind a 2016 coup attempt, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported. There has been a sustained crackdown on alleged followers of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen since the failed putsch. In the latest moves, prosecutors ordered the arrest of 157 people, including 101 serving officers in an investigation of the Turkish Armed Forces, Anadolu said. Separately, prosecutors in the capital Ankara ordered the detention of 71 people in an investigation targeting alleged Gulen supporters in the ministry, 33 of them current employees, Anadolu said.
VENEZUELA
Airline halted over Guaido
Authorities on Monday suspended TAP Air Portugal days after the airline carried National Assembly President Juan Guaido and his uncle home from an international tour aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro. Authorities arrested Guaido’s uncle upon landing, accusing him of trying to bring a small amount of explosives into the nation. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said the carrier’s flights into and out of the country had been suspended for 90 days, hours after the minister of transport and communications said the ministry had opened an investigation into “serious violation” of local regulations.
UNITED STATES
Bolton worried for book
Former national security adviser John Bolton on Monday raised concern about his unpublished book being “suppressed” by the White House and said that he should be able to respond to President Donald Trump’s tweets about him. “I hope, ultimately, I can get the book published,” Bolton told a Duke University event in North Carolina during his first public remarks since Trump’s acquittal in his US Senate impeachment trial. “I hope it’s not suppressed,” he added. Asked about the president’s criticism of him on Twitter, Bolton said: “He [Trump] tweets, but I can’t talk about it. How fair is that?”
SOUTH KOREA
Four die in highway pileup
Four people were killed and 43 were injured on Monday in a highway pileup in snowy weather, officials said. The Jeonbuk Provincial Police Agency said that the pileup involved about 30 vehicles, including a chemical truck carrying nitric acid that flipped over and caught fire inside a tunnel. Police official Jeon Gwang-hun said that he could not provide further details, because the investigation into the cause of the accident was continuing.
UNITED STATES
Swift’s dad fights burglar
Taylor Swift’s father fought a burglar who broke into his US$4 million Florida penthouse, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Scott Swift returned to his home in Vinoy Place Towers in St Petersburg on Jan. 17 just moments after 30-year-old Terrence Hoover used an emergency escape stairwell to climb 13 floors to enter it, the newspaper said. The men fought before Hoover ran away, the paper said, citing police records. Hoover has a lengthy arrest record that includes domestic violence by strangulation, aggravated battery, burglary, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and false imprisonment, the paper said. Swift picked Hoover out of a photograph lineup.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not