SOLOMON ISLANDS
China pact kept secret
The contents of a secretive security pact between China and the Pacific island nation are to remain undisclosed due to legal restrictions, the new government told reporters yesterday. The deal struck in 2022 rattled Washington and Canberra because of concern that it opened the door to a permanent Chinese military presence in the south Pacific. Prime Minister Matthew Wale in Australia last week said that his Cabinet would review the deal, which he had not seen until just before his visit. On Wednesday, Wale said his government cannot publicly disclose the details of the deal because of legal restrictions. “Unfortunately, the China Security Agreement includes a non-disclosure provision,” Wale told reporters in Honiara after returning from Australia and New Zealand, in comments carried by local media. “It is legally binding and was entered into by the previous government. We are unable to disclose its contents.”
Photo: EPA
THAILAND
Bombers sentenced to death
Two Chinese Uighur men were sentenced to death yesterday for carrying out a 2015 attack on a Bangkok shrine that killed 20 people. A court convicted Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed of premeditated and attempted murder for their role in planting a bomb at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok’s commercial heart in August 2015. The deadly blast tore apart the site where people had gathered, injuring more than 100, and leaving the shrine littered with motorbike fragments and singed debris. Multiple Chinese tourists were among the dead when explosives — apparently left in a backpack — detonated. “The defendants committed a single act that violated multiple laws. The court therefore imposed the harshest penalty available under the law, the death sentence,” one member of the four-judge panel said as the lengthy verdict was read out. The defendants — both Chinese nationals who arrived in court in prison garb — were acquitted of charges stemming from a separate bombing at a pier in Bangkok’s Charoen Nakhon area. Following the verdict, Mieraili said: “RIP Thailand’s justice system. I don’t accept any of this. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Their lawyer said they would appeal.
INDIA
Modi tenure hailed
Narendra Modi this week drew congratulations from world leaders after becoming the nation’s longest-serving elected prime minister with 12 years in office. Modi overtook Jawaharlal Nehru as the democratically elected prime minister serving the most years in the nation. Nehru, who led from independence in 1947 until his death in 1964, remains the country’s longest-serving prime minister overall.
PERU
Fujimori retakes lead
Keiko Fujimori on Wednesday retook the lead in a tight presidential race late as the remaining overseas ballots pushed her past Roberto Sanchez. Fujimori had a slim edge, with 50.002 percent to Sanchez’s 49.998 percent, a lead of about 650 votes, with 98.21 percent of polling stations reporting, or about 18 million votes, according to Peru’s ONPE electoral authority. Only a sliver of votes remained to be counted, but 1.76 percent of polling stations, representing about 400,000 votes, have been flagged for judicial review — a process that could take weeks. Most of the contested ballots are from the Lima metropolitan region, Fujimori’s stronghold. The two candidates have been neck-and-neck throughout the count, with Fujimori leading exit polls and Sanchez being slightly ahead in the Ipsos quick count.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
A coalition of civil rights groups on Tuesday asked a New York State judge to order one of its largest suburban counties to stop its deployment of nearly 600 license plate readers, calling it a warrantless and “indiscriminate surveillance system” that violates the state constitution. The class action lawsuit also alleged that Westchester County never got proper authorization to launch the program, which has amassed a database of 1.6 billion plate scans that has been shared with more than 50 outside law enforcement agencies. The complaint said the network “records the long-term travel patterns, daily habits, and intimate information of millions of
IMAGE ‘DAMAGED’? Ted Tseng, who emigrated to the US from Taiwan, was concerned the espionage case would deepen animosity against Asian Americans In 2024, voters in the Southern California city of Arcadia elected the first all-Asian city council in the city’s history. Now, one of those politicians has pleaded guilty to being an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang’s (王愛琳) plea, entered in federal court on Friday last year, continues a saga that some residents of the area worry could bring unfair scrutiny on the broader Chinese and Asian American community. Arcadia has gone under rapid demographic change in the past two decades as immigrants from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong flocked to the San Gabriel Valley
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
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