JAPAN
PM to act as foreign envoy
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida yesterday said that he might take on the additional role of foreign minister until a new Cabinet is formed later this month, after he tapped Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi for the No. 2 post in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The LDP was to convene an executive board meeting later yesterday to confirm that appointment. Kishida led the LDP to better-than-expected election results on Sunday, with the party retaining its strong majority in the lower house. The parliament is set to convene a special session on Wednesday next week to confirm Kishida as prime minister and he is expected to name a new Cabinet shortly afterward.
INDONESIA
Undersea 5.7 quake hits
A shallow undersea earthquake yesterday shook part of eastern Indonesia. The US Geological Survey said that the magnitude 5.7 quake struck about 65km off Amahai, a coastal village on Seram Island in North Maluku. It said the quake was centered about 10km beneath the sea. The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency said the quake was unlikely to trigger a tsunami. With about 1 million people, North Maluku is one of the country’s least populous provinces.
MYANMAR
Journalist gets third charge
A US journalist detained for months by the military government has been denied bail and hit with a third criminal charge, his lawyer said yesterday. Danny Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, was held in May as he attempted to leave the country. He is on trial for allegedly encouraging dissent against the military and unlawful association, and faces six years in jail if convicted on both counts. At his latest hearing inside Yangon’s Insein Prison on Wednesday, “he was told another charge was added” for allegedly breaching immigration law, said Than Zaw Aung, his lawyer. The charge carries up to five years in jail, he said.
UZBEKISTAN
YouTube access speed cut
The government on Wednesday drastically reduced the speed at which its 35 million citizens can access popular social networks and Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube, saying that they did not comply with a new personal data law. The law, which took effect last week, requires residents’ personal data to be stored on servers located in the Central Asian nation, a provision that Russia has also cited to restrict access to some social media. The list of restricted services also includes Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Microsoft’s LinkedIn, state telecoms watchdog Uzkomnazorat said.
ETHIOPIA
War reaches one-year mark
Urgent new efforts to calm the country’s escalating war were unfolding yesterday as a US special envoy visited and the president of Kenya called for an immediate ceasefire while the country marked one year of conflict. The lack of dialogue “has been particularly disturbing,” Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement. Billene Seyoum, spokesman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, did not immediately respond yesterday when asked whether he would meet with US Special Envoy Jeffrey Feltman, who this week said: “There are many, many ways to initiate discreet talks.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said he had spoken with Abiy “to offer my good offices to create the conditions for a dialogue so the fighting stops.” But so far, efforts for such discussions have failed.
UKRAINE
Hundreds join anti-vax rally
More than one thousand people on Wednesday rallied in central Kiev to protest the country’s COVID-19 vaccination drive and new restrictions that were imposed to contain a surge in infections. Ukraine has reported record numbers of daily COVID-19 cases and deaths, while only 20 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. Protesters gathered outside the parliament building in the capital before briefly blocking traffic in the center of the city. In the rain, they held up posters reading: “No to vaccination” and “No to medical experiments, protect our children.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Not enough butchers: group
Meat producers have begun exporting beef carcasses to the EU for butchering before reimporting them due to labor shortages in the wake of Brexit, the British Meat Processors Association said on Wednesday. Beef carcasses have been put on trucks and sent by ferry to the Republic of Ireland to cutting and packing plants to be butchered and then brought back to the UK, association chief executive Nick Allen said. “Whilst it is an added cost it is a better option than empty shelves and animals building up on the farms,” he said.
FRANCE
Gene can slow growth: study
Scientists have identified a gene mutation that affects the brain’s ability to sense a body’s nutrition and can impact childhood growth and delay puberty, a study released on Wednesday showed. Average human height has increased over time with greater access to food. By identifying the gene responsible for the brain receptor known as MC3R, scientists might have uncovered one of the reasons behind this trend. Analyzing data from 500,000 participants in the UK Biobank biomedical research database, they identified a few thousand people carrying rare natural mutations in the gene responsible for MC3R receptors. The study published in Nature shows those individuals were on average shorter and hit puberty later than people without the mutation.
UNITED STATES
US ‘black lists’ spyware firm
Authorities on Wednesday put the Israeli maker of the Pegasus spyware on a list of restricted companies. The company, NSO, was engulfed in controversy over reports that tens of thousands of human rights advocates, journalists, politicians and business executives worldwide were listed as potential targets of its software. “These tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression,” the US Department of Commerce said in a statement.
EL SALVADOR
Rights group raises alarm
An international rights watchdog named the country the most unsafe nation for women in Latin America and the Caribbean in a new report published on Wednesday. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said in the report it had “great concern,” as government data showed that there have been 97 femicides reported this year in the country of 6.7 million people. There were 130 reported last year.
MEXICO
Ex-Pemex chief to be held
A judge on Wednesday ordered the former chief executive officer of state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Emilio Lozoya, to be taken into custody while his trial on corruption charges plays out. Lozoya, who was extradited from Spain in July last year, is accused of taking bribes and money laundering.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.