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the film — recorded by police as a security measure — all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the images were a “historical document.”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.
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
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
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
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