SYRIA
Turkey bombs Kurdish forces
Turkish warplanes yesterday conducted a barrage of airstrikes on Kurdish positions in the northeast of the country, leaving several fighters dead, Kurdish forces and a monitor said. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said the strikes hit their positions near the border town of al-Malikiyah at 2am. “Turkish planes carried out a broad offensive on a YPG base that houses media and communication centers and some military installations,” the YPG statement said. “The treacherous attack killed and wounded fighters,” it added, without giving a toll. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkey carried out “dozens of simultaneous airstrikes” on YPG positions in Hasakeh Province overnight, confirming that a media center was hit.
SWITZERLAND
UN hosts Yemen conference
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and senior government officials from dozens of countries yesterday met to drum up funds for war-torn Yemen, considered the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Guterres and top diplomats from Switzerland and Sweden cohosted the conference in Geneva, aimed at helping raise US$2.1 billion in a UN relief appeal. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “an alarming 18.8 million people are in need of humanitarian or protection assistance” in Yemen. War in the country has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed the nation to the brink of famine.
KENYA
Bus, tanker crash killing 27
A crash on Monday between a passenger bus and a tanker ferrying cooking oil killed 27 people along the main highway connecting Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa, police said. The accident occurred in the Kibwezi area at about midnight as the bus driver was trying to overtake another vehicle, but collided with the oncoming truck, Kibwezi police chief Leonard Kimaiyo said. “Twenty adults and three children died on the spot, while one adult died later in hospital,” Kimaiyo said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Wiki to combat ‘fake’ news
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched a Web site aimed at countering the spread of fake news by bringing together professional journalists and a community of volunteers and supporters to produce news articles. The new platform, called Wikitribune, will be free to access and carry no advertising, Wales said. “The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it,” he said in a promotional video posted on the Web site’s homepage. Wales said that because people expected to get news for free on the Internet, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which created strong incentives to generate so-called “clickbait,” to attract viewers.
CHINA
West Bank work banned
Beijing is not allowing its construction crews to work in the West Bank because it opposes Israeli settlements in what it considers occupied Palestinian territory. Israel officials on Sunday said that they had signed a deal with the government to bring construction crews to Israel. They would not address reports that the work would be restricted to only some areas. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman on Monday confirmed the West Bank restrictions. Spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said the government values its relationship with Israel, but “opposes the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestine’s occupied territory.”
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
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