CHINA
Dog-eating ban planned
Beijing signaled that it is planning to officially ban the eating of dogs after the species was omitted from a list of animals approved for human consumption. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on Wednesday published a draft version of the list, which lays out what animals will be allowed to be bred for meat, fur and medical use, and includes species such as deer, ostriches and foxes. The ministry is seeking public feedback on the draft list until May 8, it said. In its statement, the ministry noted the omission of dogs, saying that public concern about the issue and a growing awareness of animal protection had contributed to the species being left off. Cats were also omitted, although that was not specifically addressed by the ministry. The issue of eating of dogs has been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was first identified in patients linked to a market in the city of Wuhan where non-traditional animals were sold for food. Authorities in February banned the sale of wild animals in response to suspicions that the virus had jumped to humans through a species at the market.
PAKISTAN
Military downs drone
The military yesterday said that its troops shot down a small Indian spy drone after it violated the country’s airspace in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. In a statement, the military said that troops downed the drone when it “intruded 600m inside Pakistan’s territory” for surveillance along the Line of Control that divides the Pakistani and Indian-controlled portions of Kashmir. The military released a photograph of what it said was the downed drone. There was no immediate comment from India.
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
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
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
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