AFGHANISTAN
Prisoner release backed
The government and the Taliban are “on the verge of peace talks” after thousands of prominent tribal leaders and other prominent people taking part in a three-day loya jirga approved the release of about 400 Taliban prisoners, the head of Kabul’s peace council said yesterday. The prisoners’ fate has been a crucial hurdle in launching peace talks between the two sides, which had committed to completing a prisoner exchange before negotiations can start. “In order to remove the hurdles for the start of peace talks, stopping bloodshed, and for the good of the public, the jirga approves the release of 400 prisoners as demanded by the Taliban,” jirga member Atefa Tayeb said. According to an official list seen by reporters, many of the inmates are accused of serious offences, including many involved in attacks that killed scores of Afghans and foreigners, with more than 150 of them on death row. The jirga urged the government to give assurances that the released prisoners would be monitored and would not be allowed to return to the battlefield. It also demanded a “serious, immediate and lasting ceasefire.”
UNITED STATES
Esper affirms Afghan cutback
Washington plans to cut its troop levels in Afghanistan to “a number less than 5,000” by the end of November, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in an interview broadcast on Saturday. It has about 8,600 troops in the nation. President Donald Trump said in an interview on Monday last week that the plan was to lower that number to about 4,000.
CHINA
Airplane drama ends safely
A Shenzhen Airlines Co flight that plunged more than 5,500m inside two minutes landed safely yesterday morning, China Central Television reported. The plane dived to from 9,297m to 3,733m about 25 minutes after taking off from Shenzhen on a flight to Xian. The Airbus SE A330 suffered an “abnormal pressure increase” when it climbed to 9,200m, and the pilots followed procedure and descended to a safe height, the airline said in a statement. The plane returned to Shenzhen and all the passengers and crew left the aircraft safely, it said.
SOUTH KOREA
At least 30 dead after deluge
More than a week of torrential rain has left at least 30 dead and 12 missing in landslides, floods and other incidents, the government said yesterday while warning of further downpour. The causalities include 13 dead and two missing from the past two days, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said in a report. Rain on Friday and Saturday also left more than 3,700 displaced as it flooded residential areas, roads and farming fields in the south. Weather official Woo Jin-kyu said most places received three to four times more rainfall last week than the average precipitation recorded in the same period in the past 30 years.
INDIA
Pilot error mooted in crash
An Air India Express jet that overshot the runway at Calicut International Airport near Kozhikode on Friday, killing at least 18 people, touched down too far down the airstrip, Ministry of Civil Aviation Director-General Arun Kumar said amid ongoing investigations. He told CNN-News18 on Saturday that the plane landed about 914m into a 2,743m runway, causing it to breach a further 240m safety area at high speed and crash into a valley beyond. “Looks like,” Kumar said when asked by the TV channel if the incident seemed to be the result of bad judgement.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s