SINGAPORE
Malaysian port plan decried
The government has made a “strong protest” to Malaysia over its plan to extend the limits of a port in its southernmost state, saying that it encroached its territorial waters. The Ministry of Transport said it had asked Kuala Lumpur to reverse steps to change the port’s limits to reflect the city-state’s sovereignty in the area. Malaysian Minister of Transport Anthony Loke Siew Fook yesterday said those claims were inaccurate, adding: “The altered port limits of Johor Bahru Port are in Malaysia’s territorial sea and it is well within Malaysia’s right to draw any port limit in our territorial sea.”
INDONESIA
Mass killers hunted
Soldiers yesterday hunted for rebels suspected of killing as many as 31 construction workers in restive Papua Province. About 150 military personnel were focusing their operation at Nduga, a remote mountainous region where a state-owned contractor has been building bridges and roads. Many Papuans view Indonesia as a colonial occupier and its building work as a way to exert more control over an impoverished region. “I have ordered the chiefs of the military and national police to chase and arrest all the perpetrators of these barbaric and inhumane acts,” President Joko Widodo said in Jakarta.
CHINA
Human rights official visits
Germany’s top official for human rights was due to arrive in Tibet yesterday for a dialogue with officials after being denied permission to visit the heavily policed region of Xinjiang. German Human Rights Commissioner Barbel Kofler said she had wanted to travel to Xinjiang, where an estimated 1 million members of the Turkic Muslim Uighur minority have been held in political re-education camps. Kofler said that conditions in Tibet give her “great cause for concern” due to restrictions on traditional Buddhist culture and “excessive controls.” She is to hold talks today and tomorrow.
UKRAINE
Russian threat is building
Russia has since August been building up its forces near the border of the two countries and poses the greatest military threat since 2014, the year Moscow annexed Crimea, the commander of the nation’s armed forces said in an interview on Tuesday. General Viktor Muzhenko gestured to a series of satellite images that he said showed the presence of Russian tanks stationed 18km from the border. They increased from 93 machines to 250 during the last half of September. “It is very difficult to predict when it will occur to him to begin active combat actions against Ukraine,” Muzhenko said.
ALGERIA
Slain monks to be beatified
The Catholic Church on Saturday plans to beatify seven French monks and 12 other clergy killed during the nation’s civil war, the first ceremony of its kind in a Muslim nation. The Trappist monks were abducted by gunmen in March 1996 and their severed heads discovered two months later. Beatification is the first step on the path to Roman Catholic sainthood. Archbishop of Algiers Paul Desfarges said the ceremony would highlight the dedication of men and women who remained during the violence. “They did not hesitate to risk their lives because the most important thing for them was their relationship with others, rather than protecting themselves,” he said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Gay filmmaker wins prize
An openly gay Scottish artist who celebrated queer lives in a short film shot on an iPhone on Tuesday won Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize. Charlotte Prodger came out on top at a glitzy reception at London’s Tate Museum for a 33-minute visual compilation called BRIDGIT. The jury said Prodger’s work “meanders through disparate associations ranging from JD Sports and standing stones to 1970s lesbian separatism and Jimi Hendrix’s sound recordist.” The 44-year-old Glasgow-based artist said she felt “quite overwhelmed,” adding: “The stories that I am telling, although they are mine and are personal, are stories that a lot of people — well, I guess queer people — have experienced.”
UNITED STATES
Four charged for tax evasion
Federal authorities on Tuesday announced a raft of conspiracy and tax fraud charges against four men in the nation’s first prosecution related to the Panama Papers. The 11-count indictment stems from what prosecutors described as an “intercontinental money-laundering scheme” involving a global law firm based in Panama. Two Germans, one American and a Panamanian attorney were charged with conspiracy and other counts. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said the defendants “shuffled millions of dollars through off-shore accounts” and had “a playbook to repatriate untaxed money into the US banking system.”
UNITED STATES
Einstein letter on God sold
A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein in which the physicist doubted the existence of God was auctioned on Tuesday for US$2.89 million. In the letter, dated 1954 and written in German to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein said he did not believe in God. “The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses,” he wrote. “The Bible, a collection of venerable, but still rather primitive legends.” The letter was last sold in 2008 to a private collector for US$404,000, Christie’s said.
UNITED STATES
Flynn could avoid jail
Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday recommended that former national security adviser Michael Flynn face no jail time due to his “substantial” cooperation with the investigation. Mueller said in a court document that the retired lieutenant general had helped in his and other unspecified federal criminal investigations, including being interviewed 19 times. “Given the defendant’s substantial assistance ... a sentence at the low end of the guideline range — including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration — is appropriate and warranted,” the filing said.
UNITED STATES
Woman kills jail escapee
An inmate who had escaped minutes earlier from a county jail in South Carolina was shot and killed by a woman after he kicked in her back door, Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark said. The inmate was still in his orange jail jumpsuit and had grabbed a knife sharpening tool from the woman’s kitchen in Pickens as he headed toward her bedroom at about 3am on Tuesday, Clark said. “This was a big guy. If she hadn’t had a weapon there’s no telling what would have happened,” he said. “I gave her a big hug. I told her how proud I was of her.” The woman was home alone and had gone through training to get a concealed weapons permit, Clark said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
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