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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion