HONG KONG
Man arrested for tribute
A man who paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II near the British Consulate was on Monday arrested for alleged sedition. Police on Tuesday said the 43-year-old man was detained near the consulate, where dozens of people had gathered to remember the late monarch. Local media reports said the man had stood outside the consulate playing songs on a harmonica including Glory to Hong Kong, the anthem of democracy protests that rocked the territory in 2019. Video posted online showed the crowd singing along as he played. Police said the man was arrested for investigation on suspicion of “committing an act with seditious intent.”
ISRAEL
Murder suspect found dead
Police yesterday said they found the body of a Palestinian man suspected of killing an 84-year-old Israeli woman after an overnight search. Police said the body was found in Tel Aviv, hours after he was alleged to have struck and killed the woman in Holon. Police earlier said they were searching for Musa Sarsour, 28, from the West Bank city of Qalqilya. They were treating the death as an attack with nationalist motives, police said, and hundreds of officers fanned out to comb through the area. Yiftach District Police Chief Haim Bublil said Sarsour was found hung in central Tel Aviv, off a major shopping district, early yesterday. The woman was found unconscious on the side of a road on Tuesday afternoon and media reported that security camera footage showed the woman being struck from behind with a heavy object.
CARIBBEAN
Fiona upgraded to Category 4
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) yesterday upgraded Hurricane Fiona to a Category 4 storm, as it continued its slow and devastating march northward after slamming the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday and leaving a trail of destruction in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The center said the storm had grown stronger, registering maximum wind speeds of 210kph as it barreled toward Bermuda. “Swells from Fiona are expected to reach Bermuda by early Thursday. The swells could cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions,” the NHC said in its latest advisory. At least five people have died as the storm churned across the region.
UNITED STATES
Pentagon reviews accounts
The Department of Defense has launched a review of its psychological warfare operations after the discovery of fake accounts on social media promoting pro-West disinformation, an official confirmed on Tuesday. Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder confirmed the review after a Washington Post report said Facebook and Twitter had shut down nearly 150 fake accounts suspecting they were created by the military. Ryder did not confirm or deny that the military was behind fake accounts, and said the information still needed to be reviewed. The Post cited a report last month by Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory on pro-Western covert influence operations, which said that Twitter and Facebook had removed accounts originating from the US and Britain in July and last month for engaging in “inauthentic behavior.” It said that Graphika and the observatory discovered an interconnected web of accounts on eight social media platforms that had been using “deceptive tactics” to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
‘NATURAL CAUSES’: New evidence indicated Kathleen Folbigg’s two daughters died of myocarditis caused by genetics, while a son died of a neurogenetic disorder An Australian woman who spent 20 years in prison was pardoned and released yesterday based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes as she had insisted. The pardon was seen as the quickest way of getting Kathleen Folbigg out of prison and a final report from the second inquiry into her guilt could recommend that the state Court of Appeals quash her convictions. Folbigg, now 55, was released from a prison in Grafton, New South Wales, following an unconditional pardon by state Governor Margaret Beazley. Australian state governors are figureheads who act on instructions of governments. New South
ADMITTED TO FAILURE: North Korea apparently used a new launch pad, which might accommodate bigger space launch vehicles, a Washington-based expert said Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, said her country would soon put a military spy satellite into orbit and promised Pyongyang would increase its military surveillance capabilities, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday. “It is certain that [North Korea’s] military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put on space orbit in the near future and start its mission,” Kim Yo-jong, a powerful government official in her own right, said in an English-language statement carried by the KCNA. Her remarks came after the failure of a North Korean satellite launch on Wednesday. It might take weeks or more to resolve the
RE-ENGAGEMENT: Both sides described the talks as ‘candid’ and ‘productive,’ with the US State Department saying that it wants to restore ‘high-level diplomacy’ Senior US and Chinese officials yesterday held “candid” talks in Beijing, days after the two countries’ defense chiefs squared off at a security forum. US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink met with Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭), becoming the most senior US official to publicly travel to Beijing since an alleged Chinese spy balloon was downed in the US. Both sides described the talks as “candid” and “productive” in their readouts, with the US Department of State saying that the exchange was part of ongoing efforts to restore “high-level diplomacy.” The Chinese
OPERATION BLACKSTONE: Belgian diplomats implied that it is worth releasing Iranians detained on terrorism charges to allow for innocent people to return home Three Europeans released from detention by Iran arrived in Belgium early yesterday, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps. One Dane and two Austrian-Iranian citizens landed shortly before 2:45am at Melsbroek Air Base just outside Brussels. They had flown from Muscat, the capital of Oman, which helped broker their release. Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hadja Lahbib welcomed them at the airport, along with Danish and Austrian diplomats. The trio’s release, as well as that of a Belgian aid worker a week earlier, were part of a prisoner swap in which Tehran got back an Iranian diplomat convicted and incarcerated in Belgium
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