JAPAN
N Korea eyes third launch
North Korea has issued formal notice of a satellite launch as early as today, the Japanese coast guard said. Pyongyang’s previous efforts to put a spy satellite into orbit in May and August both failed, and Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have repeatedly warned it not to proceed with another launch. The coast guard on Tuesday posted a notification on its Web site of a launch window between today and Friday next week, and South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries quickly issued a navigation warning for ships. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters he would “demand cancelation of the launch ... and to make utmost efforts in preparing for unpredictable situations.” He added that any use of ballistic missile technology by Pyongyang would represent a breach of UN resolutions and that Tokyo was coordinating its response with Seoul and Washington.
UKRAINE
German defense head visits
German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday for an unannounced visit to reaffirm Berlin’s backing for Ukraine in its fight against Russian troops. Berlin, the second-biggest supplier of military assistance to Kyiv after the US, is seeking to offer the reassurances after the shift in focus to the Middle East war prompted concerns about waning support for Ukraine. It was Pistorius’ second visit to Kyiv since he became defense minister at the start of this year, and it comes a day after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also made an unannounced trip to Ukraine to offer Washington’s continued support. “I am here again, firstly to pledge further support, but also to express our solidarity and deep bond and also our admiration for the courageous, brave and costly fight that is being waged here,” Pistorius said, laying flowers at Maidan square in Kyiv. He was due to hold talks with his Ukrainian counterpart and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
China
Myanmar deports suspects
Burmese authorities have handed more than 31,000 telecom fraud suspects to China since law enforcement officers from both countries launched a crackdown on online scams in September, authorities said on Tuesday. The suspects included 63 “financiers” and ringleaders of crime syndicates that have cheated Chinese citizens of large sums of money, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement. “The crackdown has achieved significant battle results,” it said. More than 100,000 people engage in telecom fraud each day in at least 1,000 scam centers, Chinese state media have reported. Chinese police started to crack down on the fraud in September and this month, police launched what they said were “swift attacks” on crime gangs in Myanmar.
VIETNAM
Rhino horn trafficker jailed
Hanoi’s People’s Court on Monday sentenced a man to 12 years in jail for smuggling rhino horns and elephant ivory from Angola, a wildlife protection group said, adding that strict penalties were a key deterrent. The nation is a transport hub for illegal wildlife in Asia and a significant consumer. Ninh Ba Dien, 36, was hired by an anonymous person to deliver two packages of goods containing nearly 12kg of rhino horn and 5kg of elephant ivory from Angola, Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV) said. One of the packages was confiscated while Dien transited in Qatar, and he was then detained at Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport in April. More than 60 tonnes of ivory, pangolin scales and rhino horns have been seized at major Vietnamese shipping ports since 2018, a 2021 report by ENV 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
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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