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.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
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