■JAPAN
Unidentified sub spotted
The government was searching on Sunday for an unidentified foreign submarine detected in its territorial waters earlier in the day, the Defense Ministry said. The Aegis destroyer Atago of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force spotted what it determined to be a periscope of an unknown submarine between Kyushu and Shikoku islands in western Japan, the ministry said. By the time officials confirmed that the submarine was not a US or Japanese vessel, it had left the area, it said. Officials dispatched the Atago as well as P-3C patrol airplanes to look for the submarine, the ministry said in a statement. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, foreign submarines and other underwater vehicles are “required to navigate on the surface and to show their flag” in territorial waters during peacetime. In November 2004, a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine entered Japanese territorial waters near the southern island of Okinawa and ignored Japanese orders for it to surface.
■HONG KONG
Seven people suffer burns
Seven people have been treated in hospital for burns suffered during Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, police said yesterday. A 16-year-old boy and an 11-year-old boy were still in hospital, while five other patients aged five to 53 were treated and discharged, a police spokesman said. People across the city of 6.9 million joined in outdoor parties, where children burned candles and lanterns and watched the full moon on Sunday evening.
■SINGAPORE
Lee leaves hospital
The nation’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) is in stable condition and has left hospital after being admitted for an abnormal heart rhythm, the government said. Lee, who turns 85 today, was taken to hospital on Saturday for a problem known as atrial flutter and stayed overnight before being discharged on Sunday. “His condition is stable and he has been advised by his doctors to resume his official schedule gradually,” a government statement said.
■VIETNAM
Police nab 62 in drug bust
Police raided a bar in a southern province and arrested 62 people on suspicion of using narcotics, a police officer said yesterday. Nearly 80 armed police officers entered the Diamond bar in Vung Tau City, 90km from Ho Chi Minh City, at 2am on Sunday and arrested all 62 people inside. The crowd, most of them in their teens and 20s, were dancing to loud music. Police seized 16 capsules of ecstasy and found an unidentified type of drug hidden in the bar counter. “This is the biggest ecstasy case ever in Vung Tau City,” said Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Huu Tung, vice director of the Vung Tau City Police Department. Tung said police spent a day questioning and testing the suspects and that 38 had tested positive for drugs.
■INDONESIA
Cash stampede kills 21
At least 21 people were killed in a stampede yesterday, as they crowded an alley to receive a cash handout for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, police said. The bodies of 21 people had been collected from the scene of the stampede in Pasuruan, East Java province, Antara state news agency reported. Police said 11 people were also injured in the crush as thousands packed the narrow sidestreet to receive a cash gift of 30,000 rupiah (US$3.30) each from a rich family. Cash handouts are a common form of charity favoured by wealthy Indonesians during the holy month.
■AUSTRIA
Hunter mistakes car for boar
A hunter tried to shoot a parked car, mistaking it for a wild boar late on Friday near Schmiedrait, in the east of the country, news agency APA reported. The 67-year-old man said he had briefly dozed off in his watchtower some 80m from where the car was parked, and upon waking up, thought the vehicle was wild game and shot at it. Blood alcohol tests revealed the hunter was not intoxicated, local police reported. The 19-year-old driver, who had parked his car on a forest path after breaking down on the main road, was standing near the vehicle with his brother, when it was shot at. The bullet went through the car but nobody was injured in the incident. The hunter was to be cited for causing potential bodily harm.
■ISRAEL
US to sell bunker-busters
The US has agreed to sell 1,000 bunker-buster bombs to Israel — a deal that could significantly improve Israel’s ability to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Military experts say an Israeli strike would require bombs that could blast through underground bunkers where some of the Iranian nuclear facilities are located. Last week, the US Defense Department notified Congress that it has agreed to sell Israel small diameter bombs that are capable of doing that. It wasn’t clear from the defense department’s announcement when the bombs would be delivered.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Teen killed in 26th murder
Senior police advisers and community leaders warned on Sunday that youth violence was spiraling out of control on inner-city streets after another teenager was killed in London. Oliver King-Onzila became the 26th teenager to be murdered in the British capital this year when he was knifed outside a bar on Saturday. The killing means that teenage homicides in the first nine months of this year already equal the number for all of last year in the London Metropolitan police area. Since 2000, the number of teenagers killed on the capital’s streets has risen year on year. King-Onzila, 19, who captained Barnet’s youth soccer team, died in a fracas outside the E Bar in Croydon, south London.
■GERMANY
Man tried for Nazi crime
A 90-year-old German, sentenced in absentia by an Italian military court to life in prison for a Nazi war crime, faced trial in Germany yesterday in one of the last cases of its kind. Josef Scheungraber, then the commander of a German mountain infantry battalion, is accused of ordering the killing of 14 civilians in the Tuscan village of Falzano near Cortona on June 26, 1944. The massacre was allegedly in retaliation for an attack by Italian partisans that left two German soldiers dead. A 15-year-old boy, Gino Massetti, survived seriously injured and — more than six decades later — testified during the Italian trial. Massetti, now 79, has told the German press that he has no desire to exact vengeance. “I just want to forget those horrible moments,” he said. Because of his advanced age, Scheungraber has not been jailed pending his trial and will only be asked to testify for a few hours at a time.
■ISRAEL
Grandma has 19th baby
A 47-year-old Israeli grandmother of seven has given birth to her 19th child, the Yediot Ahronot daily reported on Sunday. “It came as a surprise,” said Sima Zalmanov, of the northern Israeli city of Safed. “I did not think that at my age I would have another child, but it is a great joy for me.” The school principal is also waiting for the birth of her eighth grandchild.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say