JAPAN
Bomb suspect indicted
Prosecutors yesterday indicted a 24-year-old man on attempted murder and other charges in the explosives attack on Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April, media reported. Kishida was campaigning for elections in Wakayama when a man threw a homemade pipe bomb at him. Kishida was unhurt, but two others had minor injuries. After a three-month psychiatric evaluation of the suspect, prosecutors determined that Ryuji Kimura, 24, is mentally fit for trial and that the bomb used in the attack was lethal, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported. Kyodo reported that court records show Kimura might have been angry because he could not file for candidacy in last year’s elections.
BRAZIL
Twenty-one killed in cyclone
Torrential rain and winds caused by an extratropical cyclone have left at least 21 people dead, officials said on Tuesday, warning that more flooding might be coming. The latest in a string of weather disasters to hit the country, it is the deadliest in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Governor Eduardo Leite told a news conference. “We were deeply saddened to get the news that as the water recedes ... 15 more bodies were found in the town of Mucum, bringing the death toll to 21,” he said. Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes by the storms, which started on Monday, dumping hail and more than 300mm of rain on the state in less than 24 hours and triggering floods and landslides, officials said.
JAPAN
Robots to attend classes
The southern city of Kumamoto plans to use robots to enable pupils to attend classes virtually, as truancy rates surge due to anxiety and bullying, officials said yesterday. Children would be able to use devices at home to remotely maneuver robots that represent them at school, allowing them to participate in classes and discussions with schoolmates, the city said. The 1m tall robots would be self-propelling, with pupils able to move them within the school grounds and even participate in events, reports said. “Communicating through these robots is not completely real-life, but can at least give a certain sense of reality to kids who are still unsure and afraid of interacting with others,” said Maki Yoshizato, a Kumamoto city official. “We hope this undertaking will help alleviate their psychological fears.”
UNITED STATES
Air Canada apologizes
Air Canada says it has apologized to two passengers who were escorted off a plane by security after protesting that their seats were smeared in vomit. The airline on Tuesday said that the passengers “clearly did not receive the standard of care to which they were entitled.” The incident during boarding for an Aug. 26 flight from Las Vegas to Montreal was described in graphic detail by another passenger, Susan Benson of New Brunswick, who wrote on Facebook that she was in the row behind two women and a man. She said “there was a bit of a foul smell,” and that workers had attempted to clean it up and sprayed perfume in the area. The passengers assigned to those seats told a flight attendant that the seat and seatbelt were wet and they could still see vomit. The attendant and a supervisor told them that the flight was full, and they would just have to sit there. Later, one of the pilots told the women, who were on their way to Vienna, that they could leave and book new flights at their own expense “or they would be escorted off the plane by security and placed on a no fly list.”
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
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
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
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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