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.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema