SINGAPORE
Activist charged over rally
Authorities yesterday charged human rights activist Jolovan Wham for organizing public assemblies without a police permit, prompting rights groups to call on the government to guarantee the right to peaceful assembly. The 37-year-old former executive director of a group advocating the rights of foreign workers in Singapore could be fined up to S$10,000 (US$7,435) or imprisoned for up to six months, or both, if found guilty of repeat offenses. Wham was involved in a protest in June by several blindfolded activists who held up books on a subway train in a call for justice for 22 people detained in 1987 under a tough internal security law. He was also charged for vandalism and refusing to sign statements made during investigations, the Singapore Police Force said. He faces a total of seven charges stemming from public assemblies he organized from November last year, it said. Human Rights Watch urged the government to drop the case against “peaceful protester” Wham and to amend what it called a “draconian” law on public order to guarantee Singaporeans the right to peaceful assembly. A pre-trial conference for the case will take place on Dec. 13.
TURKEY
Hundreds more arrested
Prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 360 people in an operation targeting supporters of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen within the army, state-run Anadolu news agency reported yesterday. It said 333 of those facing arrest in the Istanbul-based operation were soldiers, 216 of them serving personnel. Ankara accuses Gulen and his network of orchestrating an attempted coup last year. Gulen denies the charge. Istanbul police officers were continuing operations to capture the suspects, it said. The private Dogan news agency said seven of those facing arrest were pilots.
UNITED STATES
Classified army data online
UpGuard, a California-based cybersecurity company, on Tuesday said that it found top secret files related to classified army communications systems sitting unprotected online for anyone to see. The data belonged to the US Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, a division of the army and the National Security Agency. The agency referred questions to the intelligence command, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UpGuard analyst Chris Vickery discovered the unprotected data online on Sept. 28. Vickery notified the government about what he had found and was told on Oct. 10 that it had been secured. The data contained 47 files and folders that could be viewed, including three that could be downloaded. The exposed data included sensitive details concerning a battlefield intelligence platform, known as the Distributed Common Ground System-Army, as well as the platform’s troubled cloud auxiliary program codenamed “Red Disk.”
BOLIVIA
Morales cleared for 4th run
The nation’s highest court on Tuesday struck down limits on re-election in the constitution and election laws, paving the way for President Evo Morales to run for a fourth term in 2019. Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party in September asked the court to rescind legal limits barring elected authorities from seeking re-election indefinitely, saying they violate human rights. “All people that were limited by the law and the constitution are hereby able to run for office, because it is up to the Bolivian people to decide,” Macario Lahor Cortez, head of the Plurinational Constitutional Court, wrote in the ruling.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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