SOUTH KOREA
Embassy deletes video
The Israeli embassy removed a video showing an imaginary scenario in which Koreans are attacked by masked assailants in Seoul, a reference to Hamas, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The ministry said in a statement that the video was deemed “inappropriate” and that it had asked the Israeli embassy to take it down. The video, which is no longer available on the embassy’s social media, depicted a distressing scenario in which a South Korean woman in the capital is abducted by an armed assailant on Christmas Day and forcibly separated from her young daughter, a clip published by South Korean broadcaster YTN showed. The Israeli embassy wrote, alongside the now-removed video posted on its Facebook account on Tuesday: “On October 7th, Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists. 1,200 men, women and children were killed, and over 240 people were taken hostage in Gaza. Imagine if it happened to you. What would you do?”
UNITED STATES
Decades-old body identified
Remains found by hikers in a shallow grave 47 years ago near a lake on the border of Arizona and Nevada have been identified. The man was Luis Alonso Paredes, who was from El Salvador, but might have been living or working in the Las Vegas area at the time of his death, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office announced on Tuesday. The remains were discovered on Nov. 23, 1976, in a desert area in northwestern Arizona, just east of Lake Mohave. An autopsy at the time revealed that the victim was likely in his early to mid-30s and had been shot in the head at close range, the sheriff’s office said. However, despite authorities collecting fingerprints during the autopsy, the case soon went cold and the victim remained nameless for close to five decades.
AUSTRIA
Inventor of Glock guns dies
Gaston Glock, the Austrian developer of the handgun that bears his name, died on Wednesday. He was 94. The Glock company announced his death, the Austria Press Agency reported. Glock, a reclusive engineer, founded the company in 1963 in Deutsch-Wagram, near Vienna. It has since expanded worldwide, including a US subsidiary founded in 1985. Glock handguns are used by police and some countries’ military forces, as well as private customers. The weapon was significantly lighter, cheaper and more reliable than the models available when it was created. Glock said on its Web site that its founder “not only revolutionized the world of small arms in the 1980s, but also succeeded in establishing the Glock brand as the global leader in the handgun industry.”
RUSSIA
Plane lands on frozen river
A Soviet-era Antonov 24 aircraft carrying 30 passengers landed on a frozen river near an airport in Russia’s east yesterday because of pilot error, transport prosecutors said. The Polar Airlines An-24 landed safely on the Kolyma River near Zyryanka in the Yakutia region, the prosecutors said. “According to preliminary information, the cause of the aviation incident was an error by the crew in piloting the aircraft,” a spokesperson for the Eastern Siberian transport prosecutor said in a statement. Prosecutors published pictures of the aircraft on a frozen river. The Izvestia newspaper published pictures of passengers disembarking. “The An-24 aircraft landed outside of the runway of the Zyryanka airport,” Polar Airlines said in a short statement. “There were no casualties.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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