INDIA
India, ASEAN band together
A special meeting between New Delhi and ASEAN foreign ministers opened yesterday with a call for more robust ties amid the war in Ukraine, and a heightened rivalry between the US and China. Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar said New Delhi and ASEAN members face the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on food and energy security, fertilizer and commodity prices, and logistics and supply chain disruptions. “India fully supports a strong, unified, prosperous ASEAN whose centrality in the Indo-Pacific [region] is fully recognized,” he said. Russia’s actions have “upended the international system of rules and norms,” Singaporean Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan said, adding that the US-China rivalry has direct implications for all of Asia.
UNITED KINGDOM
UK irked by EU court: Raab
The kingdom has no plans to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, but wants the Strasbourg-based court that enforces it to take a more limited view of its powers, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said yesterday. “Our plans involve staying within the convention... It is also important the Strasbourg court reflects and stays faithful to its mandate as part of the convention,” he told the BBC. Raab said he did not believe the convention gave the European Court of Human Rights the power to block government action, as it did over the government’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
SYRIA
Senior IS leader captured
US-led coalition forces captured a senior Islamic State (IS) leader in a military operation in northern Syria yesterday, the coalition said in a statement. The captured leader was an experienced bomb maker and operational facilitator, it said, describing him as one of the top leaders of the extremist group’s Syria branch. The statement did not identify the leader or specify the raid’s location. It said the operation was “successful” with no civilians harmed or any coalition forces injured. IS continues to operate and carry out deadly attacks in Iraq and Syria through sleeper cells, and maintains several affiliates in various countries.
THAILAND
New limits for legal pot
The government said it would limit marijuana and hemp access to people aged 20 or older, after the decriminalization of cannabis on Thursday last week sparked complaints. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Health Anutin Charnvirakul was yesterday to sign regulations designating marijuana and hemp as controlled plants. Those under the age of 20 would not be able to own or use them without a doctor’s orders, he said. Media reports said that four males, including students aged 16 and 17, were admitted to hospitals in Bangkok this week for treatment of what was defined as cannabis overdoses.
YEMEN
Journalist killed in car blast
A journalist was killed when his car exploded on Wednesday while he was driving in the port city of Aden, an official said yesterday. Minister of Information Moammar al-Iryani said an improvised explosive device had been planted in the car of Saber al-Haidari, an employee with the ministry who also worked for Japan’s NHK television network. He said in a series of posts on Twitter that al-Haidari had fled Sana’a in 2017 due to increasing restrictions by the Houthi rebels who hold the city. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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