JAPAN
Record rain recorded
Several prefectures have been deluged by their heaviest daily rains since records began, officials said yesterday, with reports of more than 100 landslides after a tropical storm. Mobara in Chiba Prefecture, which borders the capital, Tokyo, recorded 392mm of rain overnight into yesterday — the largest amount to hit the city in a 24-hour span since the Japan Meteorological Agency began the survey in 1976. On Friday, Tropical Storm Yun-yeung disrupted some railway services and left thousands of households without power in Chiba, Ibaraki and Fukushima prefectures. In Mobara, “a river near the city hall flooded on Friday and a car that was running nearby had to be rescued,” a city spokesman said, adding that levels had mostly receded.
UNITED STATES
Fewer missing in Maui
The number of missing persons following a massive wildfire that leveled a town on Maui last month has fallen from 385 to 66, Hawaii Governor Josh Green said on Friday. Green made the announcement one month after the fire that destroyed the town of Lahaina, the deadliest in the US in more than a century. The death toll from the blaze remains at 115 people, but could rise as a police investigation unfolds, Green said. The Maui Police Department is investigating the cases of missing persons, he said, adding that “the numbers are getting sorted out,” causing the reduction. The high initial numbers of missing stirred fears that the death toll could rise sharply from the blaze.
CANADA
China warns Ottawa
China is warning of “consequences” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration unless it stops spreading “lies and false information” about alleged interference in domestic affairs. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa issued a stern statement on Friday, a day after the government announced a public inquiry into meddling by China, Russia and other actors in national elections in 2019 and 2021. “China urges the Canadian side to abandon its ideological bias, stop hyping up China-related lies and false information, stop misleading the public and stop undermining China-Canada relations. Otherwise, Canada will have to bear the consequences,” an embassy spokesman said in the statement. In an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday, Trudeau said that there was no room for political “rapprochement” with China, as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) muscular foreign policy has made it impossible for the two countries to have a normal relationship.
UNITED STATES
Musk refused Kyiv request
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk late on Thursday said that he refused a Ukrainian request to activate the company’s Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a “major” act of war. His comment on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, came after CNN cited an excerpt from a new biography of Musk that says he ordered the Starlink network turned off near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack. Musk said that he had no choice but to reject an emergency request from Ukraine “to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.” He did not give the date of the request and the excerpt did not specify it. “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk wrote. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘NO COUNTRY BUMPKIN’: The judge rejected arguments that former prime minister Najib Razak was an unwitting victim, saying Najib took steps to protect his position Imprisoned former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was yesterday convicted, following a corruption trial tied to multibillion-dollar looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The nation’s high court found Najib, 72, guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 charges of money laundering related to more than US$700 million channeled into his personal bank accounts from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied any wrongdoing, and maintained the funds were a political donation from Saudi Arabia and that he had been misled by rogue financiers led by businessman Low Taek Jho. Low, thought to be the scandal’s mastermind, remains
‘POLITICAL LOYALTY’: The move breaks with decades of precedent among US administrations, which have tended to leave career ambassadors in their posts US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership. The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said. They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday announced plans for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an anti-Semitic terror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season. Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself. Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and
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