AFGHANISTAN
Ghani reaches out to Taliban
President Ashraf Ghani is calling on the Taliban to take part in peace talks to “save the country.” Ghani said the government would provide facilities and security for those Taliban members who join the peace process and would “consider the Taliban’s view in the peace talks.” A resurgent Taliban has been blamed for much of the increased violence in the nation since US and NATO forces concluded combat missions in 2014. The attacks have underscored the weaknesses of national security forces. Ghani also called on government-to-government talks with Pakistan.
SOUTH KOREA
Chinese jet flies in territory
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday summoned the Chinese ambassador to lodge a complaint over a Chinese military aircraft entering the nation’s air defense territory, the second such incident this year. The Chinese aircraft on Tuesday flew for more than four hours inside the air defense identification zone, prompting the military to scramble multiple fighter jets to track it, a defense official said. The aircraft was told to “halt its threatening flight” and “any other actions that could raise the possibility of sudden conflict,” a defense official said, adding that Chinese officials said that the aircraft’s movements had been part of regular military exercises.
SOUTH KOREA
US joint exercises to resume
The nation and the US are early next month to start a joint military exercise postponed until after the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, presidential security adviser Moon Chung-in said according to Yonhap news agency. Moon, speaking at a seminar in Washington, said he is “aware the drills will begin in the first week of April,” Yonhap reported yesterday. “However, if there are talks between the United States and North Korea before the drills, there may be some kind of compromise,” Moon added, saying he hopes for dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington to begin.
PHILIPPINES
Chief justice expects ousting
Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno expects to be impeached by the House of Representatives this month and is to go on indefinite leave to prepare for the trial, her spokesman said yesterday. Sereno is to go on leave today, but is confident of being cleared of any wrongdoing during the impeachment trial, spokesman Jojo Lacanilao said. Lacanilao said that Sereno would not resign amid reports that rival justices demanded she quit in a meeting, adding that any effort to remove the chief justice outside of an impeachment trial is unconstitutional.
INDONESIA
Groups blast reconciliation
One of the main groups for survivors of terror attacks has refused to participate in what it says is a flawed government-organized “reconciliation” meeting between former Muslim militants and victims. The three days of meetings between dozens of ex-militants and victims has its finale yesterday, with speeches by seven government ministers and singing of the national anthem. Indonesian Survivors Foundation cofounder Sucipto Hari Wibowo said the government has good intentions, but many survivors have yet to come to terms with what happened to them, let alone face the people responsible. The rights of victims are “more important than a reconciliation held under the spotlight,” he said.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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