TURKEY
Army starts drill at border
The armed forces yesterday started a military drill at the Iraqi border, the army said, a week ahead of a referendum on Kurdish independence in northern Iraq which Ankara has asked to be called off. On Saturday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the planned referendum on Monday is an issue of national security, and warned that Ankara would take any necessary steps in response. In a statement, the military said its operations targeting militant groups in the Iraq border region would continue at the same time as the drill.
FRANCE
US students attacked
Four US college students were sprayed in the face with acid on Sunday at a train station in Marseille. Boston College in Massachusetts said in a statement that the four female students were treated at a hospital for burns. The statement said the four all were juniors studying abroad, three of them at the college’s Paris program. Local officials said two of the women were not seriously hurt, but were treated for shock. Police described the suspect, a 41-year-old woman, as “disturbed” with a history of mental health problems, but no apparent past links to extremism. Regional newspaper La Provence said the assailant remained at the site of the attack without trying to flee.
PERU
President shuffles Cabinet
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Sunday made Vice President Mercedes Araoz his new prime minister in a Cabinet shuffle that won praise from the opposition — a sign his year-old government will likely avoid a fresh standoff with Congress. Kuczynski also swore in Deputy Economy Minister Claudia Cooper as his new finance minister and replaced his justice, education, health and housing ministers. Kuczynski was forced to form a new Cabinet after Congress on Friday revoked its confidence in the outgoing one following a dispute over a teachers strike and his government’s education policies that stress gender equality in the school curriculum.
MEXICO
Nine killed in shootout
The military fought back against an armed attack in Guerrero state on Saturday night, leaving eight suspected gang members and one soldier dead, authorities said on Sunday. At about 11pm, troops were making their rounds in the city of Teloloapan, about 250km from Mexico City, when they came under gunfire from suspected gang members dressed in fake military uniforms, Roberto Alvarez Heredia, a spokesman for the Guerrero Coordinating Group, said in a statement. The military secured two vans painted in camouflage, weapons and uniforms, authorities said. A soldier was wounded in the confrontation and died afterward from his injuries.
SPAIN
Police seize pamphlets
Police on Sunday seized 1.3 million pamphlets and posters supporting Catalonia’s independence referendum, the latest move to try to block the vote. Catalonia’s pro-separatist government is determined to hold a referendum on Oct. 1, despite it being banned by the nation’s Constitutional Court. The documents were seized at an advertising distribution company near Barcelona, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement. Among the documents were about 700,000 leaflets promoting a “Yes” vote in the referendum and 370,000 fliers with logo of the Catalan government along with 138,000 posters for the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy party.
MACAU
Democracy activist elected
Voters have elected a young pro-democracy activist to the territory’s legislature, as opposition lawmakers expanded their presence at the expense of candidates linked to the gambling industry. Official results showed that 26-year-old Sulu Sou (蘇嘉豪) won a seat in Sunday’s poll, making him the territory’s youngest-ever lawmaker. Sou’s party, the New Macau Association, favors full democracy for the 33-seat legislature, where only 14 seats are directly elected and the rest are filled by pro-establishment labor unions and special interest groups or appointed. Another surprise winner was university professor Agnes Lam (林玉鳳). There were few other changes to the rest of the directly elected seats, which remain dominated by pro-Beijing representatives.
JAPAN
Typhoon Talim kills two
Typhoon Talim ripped through the archipelago yesterday, leaving two people dead and three missing, officials and news reports said. Talim made landfall on Sunday in Kyushu, packing winds of up to 162kph, officials said. It reached Hokkaido yesterday morning, dumping torrential rain and paralyzing transportation on its way. NHK said 38 people had been injured in storm-related accidents.
NEPAL
Voting opens in south
The southern plains yesterday began voting in the final round of municipal elections, an important step before a general election in November. The voting covers parts of the restive southern plains that border India and are dominated by the ethnic Madhesi people. More than 2.6 million people are eligible to choose more than 6,000 representatives in 136 municipalities, officials said. The Madhesis are demanding a unified homeland and greater participation in state organs, including parliament, the judiciary, bureaucracy and the army.
PAKISTAN
Ex-PM’s wife wins seat
Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League party, the wife of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has won his parliament seat, which fell vacant after the Supreme Court disqualified him for concealing assets, unofficial results showed yesterday. She won 61,254 votes in Sunday’s by-election for a seat in Lahore, defeating Tahreek-e-Insaf’s candidate Yasmin Rashid, even though she campaigned in absentia because she is undergoing treatment in London for throat cancer.
CHINA
Japanese man held as spy
Authorities yesterday arrested a Japanese man in Dalian suspected of spying, the official Dalian Daily’s online report said. Ken Higuchi was being investigated by the Dalian City National Security Bureau on suspicion of spying against China, and that prosecutors had approved his arrest. However, it was unclear from the report whether Higuchi was a new case or whether he had been detained earlier, and the latest development was his formal arrest.
MALAYSIA
Beer festival canned
Organizers have canned an annual craft beer festival after the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party warned it would turn Kuala Lumpur into “the biggest center of vice in Asia.” The Better Beer Festival, billed as the nation’s biggest craft beer festival, was due to take place on Oct. 6 and Oct. 7. The organizers yesterday said the festival would not go ahead after city officials instructed them to cancel it due to licensing issues.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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