JAPAN
Court fines anti-Korea group
The Kyoto District Court yesterday ordered a group of anti-Korean activists to pay a pro-Pyongyang Korean elementary school in southern Kyoto ¥12 million (US$120,000) in compensation for disturbing classes and scaring children by holding “hate speech” rallies outside the school. Judge Hitoshi Hashizume said the hateful language used by members of the group Zaitokukai during the rallies was illegal. The landmark ruling stated for the first time that the insults used in the rallies constituted racial discrimination, human rights experts said, and could prompt a move to exempt hate speech from the constitutional right to free speech. Yesterday’s ruling also banned the group from staging further demonstrations around the school, court spokesman Naoki Yokota said. Zaitokukai, which boats more than 10,000 members, said it was protesting the school’s use of a park without permission. They also say that they protest against the “privileges” given to Koreans and that slurs against them are part of “freedom of expression.”
GERMANY
German killed in Yemen
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed yesterday that a security official at its embassy in Yemen has been killed, but denied reports of an attempted kidnapping of its ambassador. “We must unfortunately confirm that a German security official who was employed at the embassy in Sana’a was killed in Yemen,” a ministry spokeswoman said in a statement about Sunday’s incident. An earlier report had said Ambassador Carola Mueller-Holtkemper had been the target of a failed kidnap attempt, but the ministry told reporters that she was outside of Yemen at the time. On Sunday, a Yemeni security official and witnesses said gunmen in a vehicle opened fire and shot dead the ambassador’s bodyguard as he was leaving a store in Hada District, where foreign embassies are located.
INDIA
Dozens killed by lightning
At least 32 people, including nine children, were killed over the weekend by lightning strikes in the eastern Bihar and Jharkhand states, officials said yesterday. “About 24 people, including seven children, were killed Saturday and Sunday by bolts of lightning across Bihar,” Bihar State Minister of Disaster Management Renu Kumari Kushwaha said. In Jharkhand, eight people died, including two children, said Puran Mahto, an official in Dhanbad District. Although lightning strikes during the June-to-October monsoon season are common, the weekend toll was unusually high.
MALDIVES
Opposition TV station burned
Unidentified attackers set fire to the main pro-opposition television network yesterday ahead of a crucial court ruling on whether suspended presidential elections should go ahead, officials said. At least six men stormed the offices of the Raajje television network in a pre-dawn attack and set fire to equipment after assaulting an unarmed guard. “All broadcast equipment, transmission equipment, computer systems fully burnt and destroyed,” the station said on its Twitter feed. The police force, which has been accused of heavy-handed tactics when dealing with protesters demanding elections in recent weeks, said they were treating the incident as an arson attack. The country has been wracked by occasionally violent protests since Sept. 23, when the Supreme Court suspended a run-off election for which former president Mohamed Nasheed was the frontrunner.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages