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.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
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