SOUTH KOREA
Hostages in Nigeria released
Two South Koreans have been released after being abducted nearly three weeks ago by an unidentified armed group in Nigeria, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The two men, who were abducted in southern Nigeria on Dec. 12, are employees of Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co, Yonhap News Agency reported. South Korean authorities secured their custody on Friday, the foreign ministry said, adding that they are in good health. They “have been moved to a safe area after a medical examination, and have spoken to their families,” the ministry said in a statement. It did not state if any ransom was paid.
UNITED STATES
Burning ship heads to Alaska
A Taiwan-owned cargo vessel carrying lithium-ion batteries has been ordered to continue to Alaska after a fire was reported in its cargo hold. The coast guard on Friday said the fire is contained, but ongoing. The 125m cargo ship Genius Star XI was directed to continue to the port at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, while a coast guard airplane and ship were sent to assist. The ship was about 362km southwest of Dutch Harbor when they reported the fire early on Thursday morning, the guard said in a release. The vessel is owned by Wisdom Marine Group of Taipei. A spokesperson said in an e-mail that there were no injuries to the 19 crew members and no oil has leaked. It was headed to San Diego with the batteries from Vietnam, when the fire was detected on Monday, the e-mail said.
AUSTRALIA
Forecasting harder: official
Climate change is making it harder to accurately forecast extreme weather events, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Murray Watt said yesterday, amid criticism that the Bureau of Meteorology failed to provide timely warnings of this week’s deadly storms. “Climate change is having an impact,” Watt told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. “The models that we’ve traditionally used are having to change because the climate is changing. That’s something that I know the bureau is working hard on, but unfortunately, the reality is that climate change means that we are going to be living through more unpredictable weather.” The weather bureau has received criticism for its failure to notify residents in time about this week’s deadly thunderstorms following the landfall of ex-tropical cyclone Jasper in Queensland. Watt, who is also the emergency management minister, acknowledged the criticisms, adding that “meteorology is not a perfect science.”
UNITED STATES
Ex-Trump fixer cites AI cases
Michael Cohen, formerly a fixer and lawyer for former US president Donald Trump, said in court papers unsealed on Friday that he mistakenly gave his attorney fake case citations generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) program that made their way into an official court filing. The case citations were included by an attorney for Cohen in a motion seeking an early end to his supervised release following Cohen’s imprisonment for campaign finance violations. US District Judge Jesse Furman earlier this month said three court decisions cited in the motion did not exist. Cohen, who is expected to be a star witness against Trump at one of the former president’s criminal trials, said he had “not kept up with emerging trends [and related risks] in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.”
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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