JAPAN
Emperor calls for openness
Emperor Akihito yesterday attended a ceremony to mark the 30th year of his reign while calling for the country to embrace openness in a more globalized world. The government-sponsored ceremony at the National Theater in Tokyo was attended by Empress Michiko and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “Japan has long cultivated its own culture as an island nation, but now the world is becoming more globalized,” the 85-year-old emperor said. “I think it is now required for us to be more open to the outside world, to establish our own position with wisdom and to build relationships with other countries with sincerity.”
JAPAN
Donald Keene dies
Donald Keene, a longtime Columbia University professor who was a giant in the field of literature and translation, died yesterday of heart failure in Tokyo. He was 96. A prolific academic who worked well into his 90s, Keene published about 25 books in English, including translations of both classical and modern writers, and about 30 in Japanese. He move permanently to Tokyo in 2011 and became a citizen in 2012.
SENEGAL
Presidential election begins
Voters yesterday went to the polls in an election that President Macky Sall looks confident to win in the first round after his main challengers were banned from running. Sall faces competition from four lesser-known rivals who campaigned hard against his plans for a second phase of his “Emerging Senegal” infrastructure project, which critics call a waste of taxpayers’ money and a potential debt burden.
CHINA
New outbreak confirmed
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs yesterday confirmed a new outbreak of African swine fever in Hebei Province. The outbreak is on a farm in the Xushui District of Baoding, which has 5,600 hogs, some of which died because of the disease, the ministry said a statement on its Web site, without giving a death toll.
INDIA
Moonshine toll rises
At least 35 more workers have died in Assam State after drinking toxic liquor, police said yesterday, taking the death toll from the latest mass alcohol poisoning beyond 130. At least 200 more people were still hospitalized across Assam. “A total of 10 people have been arrested. We have sent the samples of the liquor ... to a forensic laboratory,” Mukesh Agarwala, additional director-general of state police, said. Police said people started falling sick after consuming a batch of illegally produced liquor late on Thursday. Those affected, who include many women, worked at local tea estates in the region.
PHILIPPINES
Central bank head dies
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Nestor Espenilla died on Saturday after a battle with cancer. He was 60. Espenilla disclosed his medical condition in February last year as he recovered from surgery and radiation therapy for tongue cancer. Espenilla had taken intermittent medical leave since September in addition to an overseas trip for treatment last month. The Monetary Board has designated Deputy Governor Cyd Tuano-Amador as the central bank’s officer-in-charge effective immediately until President Rodrigo Duterte appoints a successor, the bank said in a statement yesterday.
IRAN
Cruise missile tested
The navy yesterday successfully tested a cruise missile during naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz, state media reported. “On the third day of the ... exercises, a Ghadir-class Iranian navy submarine successfully launched a cruise missile,” the official news agency Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. More than 100 vessels were taking part in the ongoing three-day war games in an area stretching from the Strait of Hormuz to the Indian Ocean, state media reported. The nation’s other submarines, the Tareq and the new domestically built Fateh have the same anti-ship capability, IRNA quoted a military statement as saying.
MOLDOVA
Parliamentary elections held
Voters yesterday cast ballots in parliamentary elections that could deepen a split between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces. More than 3 million voters are eligible to elect representatives to the 101-seat legislature for a four-year term, and parties need to win 6 percent of the overall ballot to enter parliament. Opinion polls suggest the opposition Socialist party, which favors closer ties to Moscow, will win most seats, but fall short of a majority. The ruling pro-Western Democratic Party trails in second and an opposition bloc called ACUM, campaigning to fight entrenched corruption, is third.
EGYPT
Party complains of arrests
The Constitution Party founded by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei on Saturday denounced what it said was a “campaign of arrests” targeting its members after it criticized a bid to extend President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s powers. Four of its members had been arrested “in the past 48 hours,” the party posted on Facebook, while others faced “security restrictions.” It called on authorities to “stop these violations and repressive practices.” Security sources said they had “no information” on the crackdown.
FRANCE
‘Yellow vests’ protest again
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched in Paris and other cities as the “yellow vest” movement staged its 15th consecutive weekend of demonstrations against the government. Dozens of people were arrested. About 46,600 people joined the protests nationwide, including 5,800 in Paris, the Ministry of the Interior said. Paris police said the march was largely peaceful, although scuffles broke out as it wound down.
ITALY
Winds kill four people
Strong winds whipping through the center of the nation on Saturday killed four people, including a teen who died when his father fell off the roof and crushed him, the Fatto Quotidiano said. The 14-year-old in Capena, near Rome, was holding the ladder for his father as he attempted to fix damage to the family roof, when the latter was knocked off by a gust of wind, falling 6m and landing on his son, the daily said. Two men in their 70s were killed by a farm wall that collapsed on top of them near Frosinone, while a 45-year-old man died when a pine tree in Guidonia crushed his car, it said.
UNITED STATES
Film director Donen dies
Filmmaker Stanley Donen, a giant of the Hollywood musical who directed Singin’ in the Rain, Anchors Away, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Funny Face among other films, died on Thursday. He died in New York from heart failure, his sons Joshua and Mark Donen said on Saturday. He was 94.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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
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
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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