SOUTH KOREA
‘Victory’ banner offends
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the Russian embassy in Seoul to take down a large banner reading “Victory will be ours,” ahead of the fourth anniversary this week of the start of the war in Ukraine. The ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it had conveyed its concerns to the embassy without clarifying whether it had received a response. As of yesterday, the roughly 15m banner remained in place. In its statement, the ministry reiterated Seoul’s position that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal. It also said that military cooperation between Russia and North Korea should stop, describing it as a grave threat to South Korea’s security and a violation of the UN Charter and UN Security Council resolutions.
MALAYSIA
PM term limits mulled
The government yesterday introduced new legislation to restrict the prime minister’s tenure to a maximum of two terms, a move aimed at boosting accountability and curbing the overreach of executive powers. Former leader Mahathir Mohamad held office for 24 years across two stints — from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim last month announced a push for a two-term limit amid renewed calls for him to tackle corruption and improve governance. Anwar last week said that if the law is implemented, it would apply to him first. He added that a 10-year period was sufficient for those in office to carry out their responsibilities effectively. The proposed change requires approval from at least two-thirds of lawmakers, or 148 out of the 222 seats in the lower house, to pass. Currently, there is no formal constitutional limit on how long a prime minister may serve, provided the individual commands majority support in parliament.
VENEZUELA
Hundreds on hunger strike
More than 200 political prisoners have launched a hunger strike to demand their release, family members said on Sunday, after a new mass amnesty law was enacted following the ouster of former president Nicolas Maduro. The strike began on Friday night at the Rodeo I prison on the outskirts of Caracas, with the inmates complaining the law excludes many of them because they are accused of terrorism. “Approximately 214 people in total, including Venezuelans and foreigners, are on hunger strike,” said Yalitza Garcia, mother-in-law of a prisoner named Nahuel Agustin Gallo, an Argentine police officer accused of terrorism. Not all the inmates at the prison are joining the hunger strike, the relatives said. More than 1,500 political prisoners have applied for amnesty under the new law, the head of the legislature said on Saturday. Opposition figures have criticized the new legislation, which appears to include carve-outs for some offenses previously used by authorities to target Maduro’s political opponents.
NEPAL
Bus crash kills 19 people
A packed bus on its way to Kathmandu drove off a mountain highway early yesterday, killing 19 people, including a British national, and leaving another 25 wounded. There were dozens of people on board the bus, which was heading from the resort city of Pokhara to Kathmandu when it drove off the Prithvi highway after midnight, police said. The bus rolled down a mountain slope and landed on the banks of Trishuli river near Benighat, about 80km west of the capital. Among those who died was a 24-year-old British national, a statement from the Dhading district police office said. Only nine bodies have been identified.
The injured included a Chinese national, who is being treated at the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu, and a 27-year-old woman from New Zealand who received minor injuries and was being treated at a local hospital. China’s Xinhua news agency, citing the Chinese embassy in Nepal, reported earlier that one other Chinese national was missing. Rescuers reached the accident site soon after the accident, and the injured were pulled out of the wreckage and driven to hospitals for treatment, government administrator Mohan Prasad Neupane said. Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
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 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
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
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