HONG KONG
Law’s family questioned
Three family members of exiled democracy advocate Nathan Law (羅冠聰) were on Tuesday briefly taken in for questioning, a week after authorities issued a bounty on him and seven others accused of breaching the territory’s National Security Law. Police said that their National Security Department took two men and a woman away for investigation, without naming them. “They are suspected of assisting persons wanted by police to continue to commit acts and engage in activities that endanger national security,” the police said in a statement. Authorities last week offered rewards of HK$1 million (US$127,731) for information leading to the arrests of eight prominent democracy advocates now based abroad, accusing them of subversion, foreign collusion and other crimes. A police source earlier said that officers brought in Law’s parents and elder brother without formally arresting them, adding that Law’s flat was searched. The trio were taken in so that police could “learn whether they have provided financial support for Law and whether they are Law’s agents in Hong Kong,” the source said. “Law’s family members were allowed to leave after giving statements to police.” Law, who was granted asylum in the UK in 2021, in a statement on Tuesday evening denied any financial connection with the three people and said that his work was “totally unrelated” to them. “The idea of ‘getting assistance from them’ is completely absurd,” Law said. Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) on Tuesday repeated his call to the public to stay away from the wanted activists and to treat them like “rats in the street.”
CHINA
Floods spark evacuations
More than 40,000 people in Sichuan Province have been evacuated because of floods, state media reported yesterday, as cloudbursts dropped huge amounts of precipitation over several parts of the country. Bursts of unusually heavy rain have saturated different areas over the past few weeks, causing flooding and mudslides that have destroyed homes, damaged infrastructure and killed several people. State broadcaster China Central Television reported that 300.7mm of rain had fallen over Yaan city in Sichuan Province over about 14 hours, causing flash floods and mudslides that destroyed homes. Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, issued a red alert, the highest in a four-tier warning system, for heavy rain and several areas have reported record rainfall.
UNITED STATES
China hackers hit agencies
A China-based hacking group intent on conducting espionage breached a series of e-mail accounts linked to government agencies in Western Europe, Microsoft Corp said. In a blog post published on Tuesday night, Microsoft said a group that it identified as Storm-0558 was able to remain undetected for a month after gaining access to e-mail data from about 25 organizations in mid-May. The software company only discovered the breach following an investigation in the middle of last month, after being alerted by customer reports about abnormal mail activity. “We assess this adversary is focused on espionage, such as gaining access to email systems for intelligence collection,” Microsoft executive vice president Charlie Bell wrote in a post. Microsoft has since notified the affected customers and completed the relevant mitigation efforts, the company said.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to take action against the EU if it moves forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member. “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act; I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump told reporters en route to an event in North Carolina, calling the proposal “laughable.” “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he said. Von der Leyen made the proposal
SECRET FOOTAGE: A 17-year-old girl told British broadcaster Channel 4 that she had been approached by a man who covertly recorded her and their interaction Calls are growing louder in Europe for action against “pervert” smart glasses after secretly filmed footage of girls and women appeared online — with a petition in Britain demanding a ban on their sale. Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact with an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, with sales now hitting millions. The devices grabbed attention this summer after a marketing tie-up between Kylie Jenner, beauty mogul and member of the Kardashian dynasty, and tech giant Meta. Since smartphones are now embedded in daily life, “big tech” is
FROSTY RECEPTION: ‘I conveyed the strong view of the Irish people that the normalization of war and genocide can never be accepted,’ the Irish president said US President Donald Trump on Saturday said that he would “love to see” a united Ireland, wading into a politically sensitive subject as he embarked on a two-day Irish visit that blurs the lines between his presidency and personal business interests. After meeting Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin, Trump said reunification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — split for more than a century — would be “a fantastic thing.” “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now,” he told reporters, adding that “the UK will have something to say about it, obviously.”
North Korea yesterday fired multiple ballistic missiles, Seoul said, a day after South Korea concluded five days of joint maritime drills with the US and Japan that were focused on the North. Pyongyang last month slammed plans for the so-called Freedom Edge joint exercises in international waters off South Korea as a “threat” to North Korea and other countries of the region. Yesterday, Seoul’s military detected “multiple short-range ballistic missiles launched from the Wonsan area toward the East Sea [the Sea of Japan],” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The missiles were detected at about
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