HONG KONG
Police stabbing yields arrests
Police yesterday said that they have arrested seven people for “assisting” a suspect in the stabbing of a police officer during a protest against new national security legislation on Wednesday last week. Authorities arrested five males and two females aged 24 to 71 on suspicion of offenses, including helping to arrange the suspect purchase an air ticket and transportation to the airport, police said at a news briefing. Police on Thursday last week arrested a 24-year-old man at the airport on suspicion of stabbing and wounding an officer during the demonstration, just hours after the new legislation was imposed.
KAZAKHSTAN
Super pneumonia ‘fake news’
The government yesterday dismissed as incorrect a warning by China’s embassy for its citizens to guard against an outbreak of pneumonia in the nation that it described as being more lethal than COVID-19. In a statement late on Thursday on WeChat, the Chinese embassy flagged a “significant increase” in cases in the Kazakh cities of Atyrau, Aktobe and Shymkent since mid-June. However, the Ministry of Healthcare branded Chinese media reports based on the embassy statement as “fake news.”
THAILAND
US’ ‘strategic vision’ inked
US Army Chief of Staff General James McConville yesterday met with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha and Royal Thai Army Commander in Chief General Apirat Kongsompong, and signed a Strategic Vision Statement, a US embassy statement said, as Washington looks to reassure allies about its commitment to the region. The US has sought to counter China’s influence in Southeast Asia after having scaled back some military exchanges with Thailand after its 2014 military coup, when Bangkok began to forge closer ties with China.
INDIA
Australia welcomed to drills
The government plans to invite Australia to join the trilateral India-Japan-US Malabar naval exercises. The decision to include Australia in the drills — the first time that all members of the regional grouping known as the Quad would be engaged at a military level — comes as Beijing and New Delhi are caught up in their worst border tensions in four decades. The exercise would bring together the countries’ navies in the Bay of Bengal at the end of the year, said senior officials, on condition of anonymity. “The Quad has always been a security platform, but didn’t have a military context to it,” Observer Research Foundation distinguished fellow Rajeswari Pillai Rajagoplan said. “The Malabar exercises might give it just that thanks to China upping its ante and threatening the region’s security.”
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologizing over World War II, died yesterday aged 101, officials said. Murayama in 1995 expressed “deep remorse” over the country’s atrocities in Asia. The statement became a benchmark for Tokyo’s subsequent apologies over World War II. “Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101,” Social Democratic Party Chairwoman Mizuho Fukushima said. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Takano said he had been informed that the former prime minister died of old age. In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said
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