JAPAN
Ten bodies found on coast
The badly decomposed remains of 10 people have been found on the nation’s coast across the sea from North Korea, along with the wreckage of two boats, officials said yesterday. The discovery comes just days after a group of eight fishermen, who said they were from North Korea, washed up on the same shore. Police said two cadavers were found in separate places on the edge of the surf on Sado Island, about 750km from North Korea across the Sea of Japan. The bodies had begun to putrefy and had nothing to identify them, senior local police official Hideaki Sakyo told reporters. However, he added, there were boxes of North Korean tobacco, as well as boat parts and life jackets with Korean writing on them nearby. A wrecked wooden boat with squid-fishing equipment was also found on the coastline.
TURKEY
Academic detained in probe
Counterterror police detained 10 people, including academic Fikret Baskaya, early yesterday in an operation targeting members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Baris Yarkadas, a lawmaker from the main opposition CHP, wrote on Twitter that Baskaya, 77, had been detained at his home in the capital, Ankara, at 6:30am and that police had seized some of his personal possessions. Anadolu said arrest warrants had been issued for a total of 17 people on allegations of aiding the PKK and spreading the group’s propaganda on social media. Baskaya is a university lecturer and author.
HONG KONG
Monet glasses get US$50,000
A collection of French artist Claude Monet’s personal belongings, including a pair of round-rimmed wire spectacles, have fetched almost US$11 million at an auction, Christie’s said. The dainty glasses, made from gold-colored metal, on Sunday went to an unnamed Asian buyer for US$51,457, far exceeding the auction house’s estimate of US$1,000 to US$1,500. The sale included other rare items like Monet’s pencil sketches, paintings and Japanese woodblock prints from the French master’s personal collection. A sculpture of a cat from 19th-century Japan’s late Edo or early Meiji period, sleeping curled up and measuring 32.8cm, went under the hammer for US$67,538. “This collection provides an intimate insight into the life of Monet the artist and Monet the collector,” said Adrien Meyer, cochairman of the Impressionist and Modern art department at Christie’s. The top lots sold for well above their estimated price. An oil painting of a cliff face overlooking the sea by Monet, titled Falaises des Petites-Dalles, went for US$4.6 million. More than 75 percent of the lot was snapped up by Asian buyers.
SRI LANKA
Would-be migrants arrested
Police say they have arrested 22 people who were attempting to illegally migrate to Australia by boat. The suspects were arrested on a tip on Sunday at the coastal town of Puttalam, about 120km north of the capital, Colombo, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said. They were to appear in court yesterday. Sri Lankan and Australian authorities are cooperating with each other to combat human smuggling. No Sri Lankan asylum seekers have reached Australia by boat since 2013. However, Sri Lankans, Iranians and Afghans are the largest national groups among more than 2,000 asylum seekers living on Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Australia pays those countries to house them, but refuses to resettle any of them.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
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