ECUADOR
Assange lawsuit dismissed
A judge on Monday threw out the lawsuit WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange filed charging that Quito violated his “fundamental rights” and limited his access to the outside world while in asylum at its London embassy. Magistrate Karen Martinez ruled that the suit could not move forward, as filed by WikiLeaks’ attorney, the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon. The 47-year-old Australian’s legal action had come with speculation mounting that Ecuador is preparing to end its standoff with the British government by terminating his high-profile stay. Carlos Poveda, Assange’s lawyer in Ecuador, appealed the ruling. That means a higher court should review the case in coming days.
JAPAN
Beatles superfans lose fight
It has been a hard day’s fight, but a group of Japanese Beatles fans have lost their bid to get police to hand over historic footage of the band’s 1966 Japan visit. The superfans took their battle for the film — recorded by police as a security measure — all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the images were a “historical document.” Police had offered to release the footage, reportedly about 35 minutes long, but only after blurring the faces of everyone in the film except the Beatles, citing privacy reasons. Two lower courts backed the police against a group of citizens from Nagoya, who wanted the entire film released uncensored, saying it would be almost impossible to identify people in the footage more than 50 years later. However, the long and winding legal battle ended last week when the supreme court rejected their argument, the group announced. The Beatles toured Japan only once, playing five concerts, and were trailed across the country by legions of screaming fans.
CHINA
Ex-spy heads top university
Peking University has appointed as its top leader a former head of the national spy agency’s branch in the Chinese capital. Qiu Shuiping’s (邱水平) appointment comes as President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) administration seeks to enforce academic conformity and tighten the Chinese Communist Party’s power over academia and other sectors not under its direct control. The university said in a news release that Qiu aimed as its party secretary to turn it into a “world-class university with Chinese characteristics.” Qiu graduated from Peking University in 1983 with a law degree. His lengthy official resume says that from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014, he was party secretary of Beijing’s State Security Bureau. That is the local branch of the ministry of the same name responsible for espionage and counterespionage.
MALAYSIA
Wife charged with murder
A British woman was yesterday charged with murdering her husband, who was found stabbed to death at their home on Langkawi Island. Lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo said that Samantha Jones, 51, was asked by a court official if she understood the charge, which carries the mandatory death sentence by hanging, and that her client said yes. Police found a blood-stained kitchen knife in the couple’s home, where John William Jones was found dead on Oct. 18. Kaur said Jones did not enter a plea as the magistrate’s court has no jurisdiction to hear a murder case and that the case is expected to be transferred to the high court. She said Jones was “very, very overwhelmed” and grieved for her husband.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
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