AUSTRALIA
Indonesia deal inked
Canberra and Jakarta have agreed to sign a new security treaty, which includes closer military cooperation, the two countries’ leaders said after talks in Sydney yesterday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, speaking alongside Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto at a Royal Australian Navy Base in Sydney, said that they had “just substantively concluded negotiations on a new bilateral treaty on our common security. This treaty is a recognition from both our nations that the best way to secure... peace and stability is by acting together,” Albanese said. He said he hoped to visit Indonesia next year to sign the new treaty. Prabowo said that the deal committed the two countries to “close cooperation in the defense and security field.”
Photo: EPA
AUSTRALIA
Court blocks Russia
The High Court yesterday blocked Russia from building a new embassy in Canberra, unanimously upholding a law that canceled its lease on national security grounds. Russia owned a lease to a plot of land that is about 300m from Parliament House and intended to build a new embassy building there to replace an older building elsewhere in the capital, but in 2023, the government introduced a law to cancel the lease after receiving “very clear security advice as to the risk presented by a new Russian presence so close to Parliament House,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at the time. Russia challenged the law at the court, arguing that parliament was not authorized under the constitution to pass such a law. Yesterday, the court ruled unanimously that the Home Affairs Act validly invoked parliament’s constitutional power to seize land on “just terms,” although it said that Moscow was entitled to compensation.
SOUTH KOREA
Ex-spy chief arrested
A former South Korean spy chief who led the intelligence agency during last year’s martial law declaration was arrested yesterday for alleged dereliction of duty, a court told reporters. The arrest follows a request by special prosecutors for a warrant against Cho Tae-yong, former head of the National Intelligence Service, on charges including that he ignored his duties as spy agency chief and posed a risk of destroying evidence. The Seoul Central District Court reviewed the validity of the warrant on Tuesday and granted it. “The outcome of the review is ... the issuance of the warrant on the risk of evidence destruction,” the court said in a statement. “The primary charge is dereliction of duty.” Prosecutors said that Cho, a career diplomat who led the spy agency at the time of former president Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration in December last year, failed to report the move to parliament despite “understanding its illegality.” He is also accused of making false statements.
THAILAND
Extradition approved
An appeals court on Monday approved the extradition to China of She Zhijiang (佘智江), an alleged transnational crime kingpin accused by Beijing of having run more than 200 illegal online gambling operations. He was arrested in Bangkok in August 2022 on a 2014 arrest warrant from China’s police and is in the Klong Prem Central Prison in Bangkok. She’s legal team had challenged the constitutionality of Thailand extradition law, but that was rejected last month. Monday’s ruling calls for him to be sent to China within 90 days.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
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