BANGLADESH
Ousted PM seeks passport
Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday requested a new passport to facilitate her return from exile two years after she was ousted in a mass uprising. The government has been seeking her extradition from India and earlier dismissed suggestions she needed new identification documents to return home. Hasina said she wants to return next month at any cost, despite being sentenced to death over her government’s deadly crackdown on protesters. “If death is my destiny, I would rather die on the soil of my own country, among my own people,” she said last week. In a letter seen by The Associated Press that was e-mailed to the government’s diplomatic mission in New Delhi, Hasina’s counsel urged the top diplomat to take necessary action to provide her a passport and national identity card.
Photo: Reuters
GREECE
Twenty migrants die at sea
Twenty people have died over the weekend trying to reach Crete, which has become a main destination for migrants headed for the EU, authorities said yesterday. Eight bodies were found on one boat and 12 on another, while 40 people were rescued off both, the Hellenic Coast Guard said yesterday. Maritime police launched an emergency rescue late on Saturday after a boat issued an alarm signal, with strong winds making sea conditions difficult, the coast guard said. About 28 survivors and one body, all Sudanese nationals, were picked up by another boat sailing nearby, then transferred to a police vessel and taken to Crete, authorities had said on Sunday.
JAPAN
Okinawa seeks US review
Okinawa Governor Genta Koja yesterday said he would request a review of a pact seen as giving the US military preferential treatment in Japan, following a murder allegedly committed by a US Marine. Prosecutors last month indicted the Marine on suspicion of murdering a 39-year-old woman at an Okinawa hotel, in a case that triggered outrage and reignited controversy over the US military presence on the southern island. “I’ll call for a fundamental review of the SOFA,” Koja said, referring to the 1960 Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement, which critics say has rendered US military bases virtually extraterritorial and immune to domestic laws.
CHINA
Pastor arrested in Beijing
A pastor of a house church in Beijing has been arrested, his wife said this week amid an intensifying crackdown on unregistered churches. Pastor Cui “Edward” Xianfeng (崔獻峰), who founded Beijing Jiaquan Church in 2006, was arrested on Oct. 23 on charges of fraud, said his wife, Gu Jin-young, who lives outside of China. Cui was first detained on Sept. 4 as part of a raid on his church that involved about 100 police officers, Gu said. The fraud allegations are related to church members’ offerings, she said. Such charges are likely related to the church being unregistered. Police in Beijing’s Shijingshan District did not respond to a request for comment. By 2019, authorities sealed off the group’s worship facility in Beijing, forcing the congregation to meet in smaller groups and at different locations, Gu said. In 2023, authorities interrupted a Sunday church class to warn Gu and Cui that their church had become too large, she said. Gu, a South Korean national, said she has been denied a visa since 2023 to return to China as a family member.
Giant pandas Ping Ping and Fu Shuang delighted visitors to Zoo Atlanta during their public debut Friday, chewing bamboo and lounging in their new US habitat while on loan from China. A male named Ping Ping and female Fu Shuang arrived from Chengdu in via a FedEx flight dubbed the “Panda Express,” and are to be hosted in the southern US facility for the next 10 years. Pandas are “animals that have got a unique ability to inspire curiosity, instill passion, evoke joy, and unite people around the globe,” chief executive officer Raymond King told onlookers at Zoo Atlanta. “This extraordinary
KIRIBATI: Nine people on a skiff had been reported missing after they failed to return to Ruo Island in Micronesia on July 30. Four people remained missing Five people, including two children, were rescued this week in the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati after three months drifting at sea in a 20-foot (6m) skiff, authorities said. Another four remained missing. Villagers rescued the group on Sunday off Fanning Island in Kiribati, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported, after they had drifted an estimated 5,400km east from the Federated States of Micronesia. The US Coast Guard in Guam yesterday confirmed that the skiff with nine people aboard had been reported missing after it failed to return to Ruo Island in Micronesia on July 30. 10-DAY SEARCH A 10-day search covering
China plans to roll out a broad set of standards governing the safety of artificial intelligence (AI) from development through deployment, representing some of the most comprehensive guidelines to guard against a loss of control over increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. The state economic planner yesterday said it was quickening legislation to govern and oversee how AI is developed and applied, covering the entire life cycle of models. The regulations would extend to areas from data to computing power, Wang Ruomeng (汪若夢), deputy director-general of the Department of Innovation and High-Tech Development at China’s National Development and Reform Commission, told a briefing in
One of Haiti’s most powerful gangs said on Friday that it reached out to a government agency responsible for dismantling armed gangs in a push for “peace, stability and national reconciliation.” The 400 Mawozo gang sent a three-page statement to The Associated Press stressing that “dialogue is not a capitulation,” but rather an “act of patriotic responsibility to preserve human lives.” The UN and human rights groups have accused 400 Mawozo of raping, killing and kidnapping people, which it has denied. On Sunday last week, gang leader Wilson Joseph said that he wrote to the UN Secretary-General and requested that the organization
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