AFGHANISTAN
Governor killed in attack
Badakhshan Acting Provincial Governor Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi was yesterday killed by a suicide bomber, officials said, months after the region’s police chief was killed in a similar attack claimed by the Islamic State group. Security has improved dramatically since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021, ousting the US-backed government and ending their two-decade insurgency, but the Islamic State group remains a threat. The bomber drove a car filled with explosives into the vehicle carrying Ahmadi in the provincial capital, Faizabad. “The target of this attack was the vehicle carrying Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi,” said Muazuddin Ahmadi, the head of culture and information in the province. The driver was also killed and six others wounded in the attack, which has so far not been claimed by anyone.
AUSTRALIA
Hanoi pardons Australians
Two Australians sentenced to death in Vietnam have been granted clemency thanks to improving diplomatic relations, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, after an official visit to the Southeast Asian country. “We make representations on behalf of Australian citizens. And we are very pleased that Vietnam has agreed to the request, and we thank them for it,” Albanese told ABC television. He said he would not reveal the names of the people who were granted clemency as they had requested privacy. Their families have been informed about the decision. Albanese had traveled to Vietnam over the weekend, where he met his counterpart, Pham Minh Chinh, and said the visit provided “an impetus for this outcome.”
VANUATU
Security deal under review
The government yesterday said that a security treaty with Australia would be put to parliament before the end of this year, as concerns over China in the region saw neighboring Papua New Guinea delay signing another such treaty. Prime Ishmael Kalsakau said, during a visit by Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles, that a security treaty signed with Australia in December last year is still being examined. Some Vanuatu politicians who favor ties with China have expressed concern over the deal. The National Security Council was “going through the text” and it will next be considered by his government’s Council of Ministers, Kalsakau said in the capital, Port Vila. “It will be presented for ratification before the end of this year in Parliament,” he said.
CHINA
Tuition rises up to 54%
Chinese universities are drastically increasing tuition fees this year, with some making their first increases in two decades, hurt by a reduced national budget for tertiary education and tight local government finances. The higher fees come amid a financial crunch among local governments after three years of disruptive COVID-19 policies, a property crisis and a sluggish economy. Chinese universities, almost all public, rely heavily on state funding. Shanghai-based East China University of Science and Technology raised tuition fees by 54 percent to 7,700 yuan (US$1,082) annually for some first-year students majoring in science, engineering and physical education, and by 30 percent in the liberal arts, statements issued on Sunday said. Sichuan and Jilin provinces also raised tuition for different majors, with the maximum increase as much as 41 percent in Sichuan, local government statements said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning