CHINA
Israel embassy man stabbed
A 50-year-old Israeli man who works at the Israeli embassy in Beijing was on Friday stabbed in front of a supermarket, Chinese police and the Israeli government said. Beijing police said they had arrested a suspect, a 53-year-old foreign man. They described the victim as a family member of an Israeli diplomat. No motive was given for the attack. “The employee was transferred to hospital and he is in a stable condition,” the Israeli government said in a statement, without giving more details. A video posted on social media showed a man with a knife grappling with another man on the ground and stabbing him several times, leaving a trail of blood stains on the sidewalk.
SINGAPORE
Man indicted for bomb threat
An Australian man was on Saturday charged for making a false bomb threat on board a Perth-bound plane. Hawkins Kevin Francis, 30, faces up to 10 years in jail, a fine not exceeding S$500,000 (US$364,830) or both on conviction. Flight TR16 operated by budget carrier Scoot was forced to turn back to the city-state an hour into the journey on Thursday after the threat was made. The air force scrambled fighter jets to escort the aircraft back and the plane landed safely. Police said the threat was false. A district court ordered him to be remanded to an institute of mental health for two weeks for psychiatric observation.
RUSSIA
Navalny lawyers detained
Moscow on Friday detained three lawyers of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny and raided their homes, aides said. Navalny is the country’s most prominent opposition politician and mobilized huge anti-government rallies before he was jailed in 2021 on fraud charges that his allies at home and abroad say are punitive. Lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexey Liptser, who have all defended Navalny in the past, have been remanded in pretrial detention until at least Dec. 13. Kobzev was due in court on Friday to represent Navalny in a lawsuit he has launched against his prison, but several aides said he was absent. “This is why it’s all being done: so that Alexei is left without legal protection,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said. “And to send a signal to other lawyers: it is dangerous to defend him and other political prisoners.”
UNITED STATES
NK sent Russia arms: Kirby
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday Pyongyang had provided Russia with 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions. “We condemn the DPRK for providing Russia with this military equipment, which will be used to attack Ukrainian cities, kill Ukrainian civilians and further Russia’s illegitimate war,” Kirby said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name. Kirby said the US is also concerned about Russia in turn providing assistance to North Korea.
UNITED STATES
Poet Louise Gluck dies
Poet Louise Gluck, winner of the Nobel prize for her distinctively austere writing that touched on themes of mythology and the universal human experience, has died, a Yale University spokeswoman said on Friday. She was 80. The New York native most recently taught at Yale as a poetry professor. She died of cancer on Friday at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the New York Times reported, citing friend and former Yale colleague Richard Deming. Gluck was the 2020 Nobel laureate in literature, the 16th woman to win the award.
‘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
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
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,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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