JAPAN
Tourist boat wreck found
Authorities yesterday located the hull of a tour boat off the northern coast, the coast guard said, six days after the vessel disappeared in an accident that killed at least 14 people on a sightseeing trip. The hull of the Kazu I was found on the seabed at a depth of about 120m off Hokkaido in pitch-dark waters shown in footage from an underwater camera of the Maritime Self Defense Force, the coast guard said. The boat went missing on Saturday last week, several hours after departing for a tour of the peninsula, famed for its rugged coastal scenery and wildlife. Twelve people remain unaccounted for, a coast guard official said. The coast guard said a Russian guard ship on Wednesday lost sight of someone wearing a life jacket who was adrift at sea in waters west of Kunashiri Island.
INDONESIA
Twelve killed in mud slide
Rescuers retrieved a dozen bodies of women buried under tonnes of mud from a landslide that crashed onto an unauthorized gold mining operation on Sumatra, police said yesterday. About 14 women were looking for gold grains on Thursday in a pit about 2m deep at a small, unauthorized traditional gold mine in North Sumatra’s Mandailing Natal Regency when a landslide plunged down surrounding hills and buried them, local police chief Marlon Rajagukguk said. A two-hour search and rescue operation managed to rescue two injured women and pulled the bodies of 12 women from the rubble, Rajagukguk said. He said authorities have closed illegal gold pits in the area, which was a main source of gold to be panned traditionally by villagers before the landslide.
ISRAEL
Police, Palestinians clash
Palestinians early yesterday hurled stones and police fired rubber-coated bullets at the al-Aqsa Mosque. The police said that Palestinians inside the compound began hurling stones and fireworks around dawn in the direction of a heavily guarded gate that leads to the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray. The police advanced into the compound, firing rubber-coated bullets, and the violence ended an hour later after other Palestinians intervened, convincing the stone throwers and the police to pull back. The Palestinian Red Crescent said that more than 40 people were wounded, with 22 requiring treatment at local hospitals. It said that Israeli forces prevented first responders from entering the compound during the clashes, and that one of its medics was beaten by police.
UNITED STATES
BVI premier arrested
British Virgin Islands (BVI) Premier Andrew Fahie was on Thursday arrested in Miami on allegations that he was trying to help a presumed drug trafficking organization smuggle thousands of kilos of Colombian cocaine through the territory and into the US. BVI Ports Authority Managing Director Oleanvine Pickering Maynard and her son were also arrested, a criminal complaint issued by the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida said. Fahie allegedly agreed to provide protection for drug shipments in exchange for 12 percent of the profits, the complaint said. The first proposed shipment of 3,000kg would have earned him about US$7.8 million, the document said. British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss said she was “appalled by these serious allegations,” adding that the arrests underlined the need to release the results of an investigation into alleged corruption and abuse of office under the Fahie government.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
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