GREECE
Storm batters islands
A rare hurricane-like storm yesterday hit western Greece, disrupting travel and causing floods and power outages in several Ionian Sea islands. “We face intense conditions with winds and very strong rainfall,” Deputy Minister for Civil Protection and Crisis Management Nikos Hardalias told reporters. Mediterranean cyclone Ianos, also known as a “medicane,” was packing violent winds of up to 117km per hour, the General Secretariat for Civil Protection said. “Trees are falling everywhere,” Ionian Islands Regional Governor Rodi Kratsa told state TV ERT. Hardalias said there were no reports of injuries so far. “The cyclone will remain in the west at the same intensity for another six to nine hours, and will then begin moving southwards,” he said. The islands of Cephalonia, Ithaki and Zakynthos have been hit with power outages and part of the local road network has been cut off, he said. Smaller problems have been reported on the islands of Corfu and Lefkada.
JAPAN
Complaint system closed
Just nine hours after the new minister for administrative reform launched an online system for reporting excessive bureaucracy and red tape, it hit a snag: too many complaints. Former minister of defense Taro Kono, now charged with the reform portfolio, said it had been effectively overwhelmed and would be closed temporarily. Kono, an enthusiastic Twitter user who regularly interacts with people on the platform, announced the complaints system shortly after he was appointed on Wednesday by newly elected Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. Kono excitedly wrote on his English-language Twitter account that the digital complaints box had “received more than 3,000 e-mails in just hours!” The deluge apparently proved too much. “I received far more e-mails than I’d expected,” he said later.
CHINA
Army claims fewer deaths
The army suffered “far fewer” than the 20 deaths incurred by India’s military in a clash on their border in the Himalayas in June, the Global Times editor-in-chief wrote on Twitter, contradicting a claim made by India’s minister of defense. “No Chinese soldiers was captured by Indian troops, but PLA [the Chinese People’s Liberation Army] captured many Indian soldiers that day,” Hu Xijin wrote. The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot, stamped “fake news,” of an Indian media report about Indian Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh saying that India inflicted heavy casualties on Chinese forces during the fighting. The June clash in the Ladakh region, on the western part of their border, was the worst violence between the nuclear-armed neighbors in decades. China has not released casualty figures for its troops.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not