JAPAN
Typhoon kills one person
Typhoon Nanmadol yesterday brought ferocious winds and record rainfall to parts of the nation, killing at least one person, disrupting transport and forcing some manufacturers to suspend operations. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delayed his departure to New York, where he is due to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly, to tomorrow to monitor the impact of the storm, media reported. State broadcaster NHK said one man was killed when his car was submerged by a flooded river and firefighters were trying to determine if a man in his 40s was inside a hut that was buried by a landslide. At least 69 people were injured, it added. About 340,000 households, most of them in Kyushu, were without electricity early yesterday, the trade ministry said.
RUSSIA
Cosmonaut Polyakov dies
Valery Polyakov, the Soviet cosmonaut who set the record for the longest single stay in space, has died at age 80, space agency Roscosmos announced yesterday. Polyakov’s record of 437 days in space began on Jan. 8, 1994, when he and two others blasted off on a two-day flight to the Soviet space station Mir. While aboard Mir, he orbited the Earth more than 7,000 times, before returning on March 22, 1995. Upon landing, he declined to be carried out of the Soyuz capsule, as is common practice to allow readjustment to the pull of gravity. He was helped to climb out himself and he walked to a nearby transport vehicle. Polyakov had trained as a physician and wanted to demonstrate that the human body could endure extended periods in space.
SWITZERLAND
IS attacker gets nine years
A Swiss woman was yesterday given a nine-year jail term for slashing two people in the name of the Islamic State (IS) group, but her sentence was suspended so she can undergo psychiatric treatment. The criminal court judges found the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, guilty of two counts of attempted murder. She was also found guilty of terrorism-linked charges. The 29-year-old woman’s mental state has been at the heart of the trial at the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona, in the Italian-speaking Ticino region where the attack occurred. The attack, in which no one died, took place on Nov. 24, 2020, in the plush Manor department store in Lugano. The woman had suddenly lunged at two random women shopping at the store, attempting to slit their throats. One of the two victims suffered a serious neck injury, while the second sustained wounds on one hand and managed, with others, to control the assailant until the police arrived.
SOUTH KOREA
Stalker’s name revealed
Police yesterday unveiled the identity of a man accused of murdering a colleague ahead of a court ruling on whether he had stalked her, a case that sparked a public demand for tougher measures to stamp out such crimes. Jeon Joo-hwan, 31, was arrested on charges of murder over the stabbing death on Wednesday last week of a 28-year-old woman in a subway restroom while she was on duty, officials said. Both were employees of Seoul Metro, the operator of subway lines in the capital, though Jeon was relieved of his duties in October last year after police began investigating the stalking accusation. A court on Thursday last week had been set to decide on Jeon’s indictment for the stalking accusation, a police officer said, but that hearing has since been postponed to Thursday next week.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant