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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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