JAPAN
Mount Fuji goes online
Authorities yesterday announced an online booking system for Mount Fuji’s most popular trail to curb overtourism. To ease congestion on the Yoshida Trail, the preferred route for most hikers, the Yamanashi region is planning to cap daily entries to 4,000 people, who are to be charged US$13 each. However, to address some climbers’ fears that they would be rejected once the daily limit is reached, online bookings are also to be introduced for the first time. The system will guarantee people entry through a new gate, “allowing them to plan ahead,” said Katsuhiro Iwama, an official from the Yamanashi regional government. Online bookings open on Monday next week for the July-September hiking season. Each day at least 1,000 places are to be kept free for on-the-spot entry.
UNITED KINGDOM
Spies for HK charged
British police yesterday said three men had been charged with assisting Hong Kong’s foreign intelligence service after authorities made a series of arrests across England. London’s Metropolitan Police said a total of 11 people were detained earlier this month, nearly all of whom were arrested in the Yorkshire area. The three men were to appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later yesterday. Seven men and one woman who were not charged were released from custody, police added. “While these offences are concerning, I want to reassure the public that we do not believe there to be any wider threat to them,” Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said in a statement. The investigation is ongoing and the police did not provide further details on the charges.
GERMANY
Court confirms AfD extremist
A high court yesterday ruled that domestic security services could continue to treat the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a potentially extremist party, meaning they retain the right to subject it to surveillance. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, charged with protecting the democratic order from extremist threats, has classified the AfD as potentially extreme since 2021. The party, which continues to top polls in several eastern states that hold elections later this year, has come under increased scrutiny over allegedly racist remarks by its members and allegations that it harbored spies and agents for Russia and China in its midst. The potentially extremist designation means the party can be covertly surveilled, including via wiretapping and recruited informants inside the party.
AUSTRALIA
Plane lands wheels-up
A light plane with three people aboard yesterday landed safely without landing gear after circling an Australian airport for almost three hours to burn off fuel. The 53-year-old pilot and his passengers, a 60-year-old man and 65-year-old woman, walked unaided from the twin-turboprop Beechcraft Super King Air after landing on a runway at Newcastle Airport north of Sydney, Police Superintendent Wayne Humphrey said. The pilot “made a textbook wheels-up landing, which I was very happy to see,” Humphrey told reporters at the airport. Paramedics checked all three at the airport, but none needed to be taken to the hospital, he said. The plane had just taken off from Newcastle for a 180km flight north to Port Macquarie when the pilot raised the alarm about “issues with the landing gear,” Humphrey said. It landed on the tarmac about three hours later at 12:20pm without incident, video showed.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant