SOUTH KOREA
S Korea, US to launch drill
South Korea, the US and Japan were set to conduct a joint air military exercise near the Korean Peninsula yesterday, weeks after the three countries carried out their first three-nation naval interdiction drills in seven years. Yesterday’s drill was to include a formation flight in which the nations’ fighter planes escort a US Air Force B-52H Stratofortress, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing unidentified US and South Korean military sources. While there have been cases of US-Korea and Japan-Korea joint drills, this would be the first time the three countries came together to conduct an aerial exercise, the report said.
UKRAINE
Russian strikes kills six
Russian missile strikes on Saturday killed at least six postal workers and wounded 16, when they hit a mail depot in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast, officials said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shared a video on social media of what appeared to be a heavily damaged warehouse surrounded by rubble and a container with the logo of Ukrainian postal operator, Nova Poshta. “All six dead and 14 injured as a result of the occupiers’ attack were employees of the company who were inside the Nova Poshta terminal,” Kharkiv Governor Oleg Sinegubov said. “The victims, aged between 19 and 42, received shrapnel wounds and blast injuries.” The Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed the death toll, but updated the number of injured to 16. Sergiy Nozhka, who works for Nova Poshta, said that a rocket “flew into the neighboring depot, but at ours too — the windows and shutters flew out. This is not the first time.”
UNITED STATES
Venezuelans top crossings
Venezuelans became the largest nationality arrested for illegally crossing the border, replacing Mexicans for the first time on record, according to figures released on Saturday, which also showed that last month was the second-highest month for arrests of all nationalities. Venezuelans were arrested 54,833 times by the Border Patrol after entering from Mexico last month, more than double from 22,090 arrests in August and well above the previous monthly high of 33,749 arrests in September last year. Arrests of all nationalities entering from Mexico totaled 218,763 last month, up 21 percent from 181,084 in August and approaching an all-time high of 222,018 in December last year, US Customs and Border Protection data showed. Arrests for the government’s budget year that ended Sept. 30 topped 2 million for the second year in a row, down 7 percent from an all-time high of more than 2.2 million arrests in the same period a year earlier.
UNITED STATES
Apple drops show over China
US comedian Jon Stewart’s talk show on Apple TV+ has reportedly been canceled after just two series due to clashes between its host and the company over topics such as China and artificial intelligence (AI). Stewart told staff that executives from Apple — which has vast commercial interests in China and AI — had expressed concern over proposed new content for The Problem with Jon Stewart, the New York Times said. Apple CEO Tim Cook made a surprise visit to China this month, and he has previously spoken of his company’s “symbiotic” relationship with the nation. In an earnings call in August, Cook said that Apple views AI and machine learning as “core fundamental technologies that are integral to virtually every product that we build.”
‘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
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
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
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