SOUTH KOREA
Court removes police chief
The Constitutional Court yesterday formally removed the country’s impeached police chief for deploying hundreds of officers to support ousted former president Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief imposition of martial law in December last year. The court said Cho Ji-ho “actively disrupted” legislative activities by deploying hundreds of police officers to the National Assembly and trying to block lawmakers from reaching the main chamber to vote to lift Yoon’s decree. Cho also infringed upon the independence of the National Election Commission by dispatching police to help the military’s seizure of two election commission offices, the court said. Yoon said the actions were intended to investigate unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
Photo: AP
FINLAND
PM apologizes to Asians
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo on Wednesday apologized to Asian nations as he sought to contain a growing controversy over derogatory images posted by far-right members of parliament. Dubbed the “slanted eyes” scandal by media, the incident is the latest in a series of cases in which members of the Finns Party, a junior partner in the governing coalition, have been accused of posting or making racist remarks. “These posts do not reflect Finland’s values of equality and inclusion,” Orpo said in statements released by embassies in China, Japan and South Korea. “Our message in Finland and to all our friends abroad is that the government takes racism seriously and is committed to combating the issue,” he said. The controversy arose earlier this month when the Miss Finland title holder was pictured pulling back her eyes in her friend’s social media post captioned “eating with a Chinese person.”
UNITED STATES
Police hunt MIT suspect
Police on Wednesday intensified their search for a suspect in the killing of physics and nuclear science professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), two days after he was shot to death at his home outside Boston. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot on Monday night at his apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. The prosecutor’s office said the homicide investigation was “active and ongoing” as of early afternoon Wednesday and had no update.
UNITED STATES
China sues Missouri
Missouri’s top prosecutor on Tuesday said China is suing after the state pressed federal officials for help collecting on an about US$25 billion court judgement related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said in a statement that China is demanding a public apology from the state in a complaint filed in the Intermediate People’s Court of Wuhan. The Chinese government is also seeking compensation equivalent to US$50.5 billion plus legal fees and the right to claim further compensation. “This lawsuit is a stalling tactic and tells me that we have been on the right side of this issue all along,” Hanaway said. At issue is a lawsuit Missouri filed alleging that China hoarded personal protective equipment during the early months of the pandemic, harming the state and its residents. A federal judge ruled for Missouri earlier this year after China declined to participate in the trial. Last month, Missouri asked the Department of State to notify China that it intends to pursue assets with full or partial Chinese government ownership to satisfy the judgement.
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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