HONG KONG
Newspaper staff denied bail
Four staff members from the now-closed Apple Daily yesterday were denied bail after they were charged with colluding with foreign forces under the Hong Kong National Security Law that has intensified fears over media freedoms. Public broadcaster RTHK said that Chief Magistrate Victor So (蘇惠德) rejected their bail applications because there was not enough evidence to show the defendants “will not commit further acts endangering national security.” The case has been adjourned until Sept. 30.
JAPAN
Olympic director fired
The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee yesterday fired the director of the opening ceremony because of a Holocaust joke he made during a comedy show in 1998. Organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto said a day ahead of the opening ceremony that director Kentaro Kobayashi had been dismissed. He was accused of using a joke about the Holocaust in his comedy act, including the phrase “Let’s play Holocaust.” “We deeply apologize for causing such a development the day before the opening ceremony,” Hashimoto said.
ARGENTINA
Nonbinary ID option started
People obtaining a national identity document were able to mark their gender with an “X” beginning on Wednesday, under a presidential decree that puts the nation at the forefront of such issues in Latin America. The option is meant to safeguard gender identity. A decree published in the country’s official gazette stated that an “X” could signify a number of statuses ranging from “nonbinary” or “indeterminate” to “another meaning which can be used to identify a person who does not feel understood under the male/female binary.” President Alberto Fernandez celebrated the decree with a ceremony at the capital’s Bicentennial Museum. “The state should not care about the sex of its citizens,” he said.
ISRAEL
Lawmakers seek NSO review
A parliamentary review panel might recommend changes to defense export policy over high-profile allegations that spyware sold by cyberfirm NSO Group has been abused in several countries, a senior lawmaker said yesterday. “We certainly have to look anew at this whole subject of licenses granted by” the Defense Export Controls Agency, Ram Ben-Barak, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Army Radio. Israel has appointed an interministerial team to assess reports published since Sunday following an investigation by 17 media organizations, which said that NSO’s Pegasus software had been used in attempted and successful hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights advocates.
UNITED STATES
Drug firms to pay US$26bn
Prosecutors from several states on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping proposed settlement under which four pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the country’s opioid epidemic would pay up to US$26 billion to resolve thousands of claims in federal and state courts. McKesson, Cardinal Health, Amerisource Bergen and Johnson & Johnson would pay to resolve about 4,000 claims and finance prevention and treatment programs, New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The settlement is the largest in a multiyear legal effort to hold the industry accountable for the opioids crisis, which has caused more than 500,000 deaths in the past 20 years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing