PAKISTAN
Bombings kill at least 24
A pair of bombings at the election offices of a political party and an independent candidate in the southwest killed at least 24 people and wounded more than two dozen others, officials said yesterday, the day before parliamentary elections are to be held. The first attack happened in Baluchistan Province’s Pashin District, provincial spokesperson Jan Achakzai said. Officials said at least 14 people were killed in the attack and the wounded are being transported to a nearby hospital. Police said some of them were listed in critical condition. Later yesterday, another bombing at the elections office of politician Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema Islam party in Baluchistan’s Qilla Saifullah Town killed at least 10 people, Acahkzai and local authorities said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. Caretaker Minister of the Interior Gohar Ejaz denounced the bombings.
NETHERLANDS
China denies hacking
Beijing would never allow any Chinese entities or individuals to conduct illegal activities such as cyberattacks or use Chinese facilities for such attacks, the Chinese embassy in the Netherlands said in a statement yesterday. The embassy was responding to a report by Dutch intelligence agencies that said Chinese state-backed cyberspies gained access to a Dutch military network last year. It was the first time the Netherlands has publicly attributed cyberespionage to China. “China opposes any malicious speculation and groundless accusations, and advocates joint efforts to safeguard cybersecurity through dialogue and cooperation,” an embassy spokesperson was quoted as saying in the statement. The allegations are the latest by a country claiming that China has tried to hack sensitive information, with the Philippines on Monday saying it had thwarted an attack by Chinese hackers.
CHINA
Antarctic station opens
The nation yesterday inaugurated its Ross Sea scientific research station, Xinhua news agency reported, starting operations in an outpost in a part of the antarctic south of Australia and New Zealand for the first time. Resembling a crucifix, like the Crux constellation, the Qinling station is to be staffed year-round with quarters sufficient to house as many as 80 people in the summer months, official media have said. Perched on the rocky coast of Inexpressible Island, Qinling is also situated near the permanently inhabited US McMurdo station. China has four other research stations in other parts of Antarctica, two of which also operate year-round.
SINGAPORE
Ex-PM’s son found liable
The High Court has found Goh Jin Hian (吳振賢) liable for US$146 million in losses under his watch as director of a now-insolvent marine fuel supplying company, adding to the legal problems facing the son of former prime minister Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟). Doing his duties “would have led him to realize that the company was being defrauded,” Justice Aedit Abdullah said in published remarks dated Jan. 24 on a petition involving Inter-Pacific Petroleum Pte. The defense argued there was no such breach or causation of loss, and regardless, the company qualifies for relief from liability under the companies act. “The financial position of the company was suspect, and should have primed the defendant to look further and obtain a picture of the true state of the affairs of the company and monitor what was happening within it,” the judge said. “That was his duty as a director.”
‘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
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
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,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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