UKRAINE
Zelenskiy urges air defenses
President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday called on the West to deliver air defense systems to Kyiv after an overnight Russian missile attack injured 17 people. The air force said it shot down 31 Russian missiles targeting Kyiv. “Such terror continues every day and night,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram. “It is possible to put an end to it through global unity... Russian terrorists do not have missiles capable of bypassing Patriot and other leading world systems.” A US$60 billion US military aid package for Ukraine has been held up in the US Congress amid domestic political arguments. Local officials said falling debris from the missiles injured 17 — 13 in Kyiv and four in the surrounding region. The air force said Russia fired two Iskander ballistic missiles and 29 cruise missiles, launched from strategic bombers.
DENMARK
Terrorism threat rising
The threat of terrorism at home and abroad has risen because of the Israel-Hamas war and a series of Koran burnings in the nation last year, the Danish security and intelligence service PET said yesterday. The PET rated the overall threat level at 4 out of 5, but said the risks within that level had increased. “The conflict between Israel and a number of militant groups is of course of concern to many people, including in Denmark,” PET said in a statement. “The conflict also contains a significant potential for radicalization and mobilization, which can potentially activate actors for spontaneous or planned reactions in Denmark, including terrorist attacks.”
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Cyberflasher’ sentenced
A convicted cyberflasher was on Tuesday sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison after sending unsolicited photos of his genitals to a teenage girl and a woman. Nicholas Hawkes, 39, a convicted sex offender, was the first person in England and Wales convicted of contravening the Online Safety Act, which took effect on Jan. 31. The court was told that Hawkes borrowed his father’s phone, saying he needed to call the probation office, went in another room and sent photos by WhatsApp to a woman and by iMessage to a 15-year-old girl, who began crying. Both took screenshots and reported him to police. The cyberflashing law makes it an offense to send unsolicited sexual images by social media, dating apps or technologies such as Bluetooth or Airdrop. “Cyberflashing is a serious crime which leaves a lasting impact on victims, but all too often it can be dismissed as thoughtless ‘banter’ or a harmless joke,” said Hannah von Dadelszen, a deputy chief with the Crown Prosecution Service.
FRANCE
Rushdie dismisses AI threat
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools might pose a threat to writers of thrillers and science fiction, but lack the originality and humor to challenge serious novelists, Salman Rushdie wrote in a French journal published yesterday. In an article translated into French for literary journal La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, Rushdie said he tested ChatGPT by asking it to write 200 words in his style. He describes the results as “a bunch of nonsense.” “No reader who had read a single page of mine could think I was the author. Rather reassuring,” he said. However, generative AI writing tools could be a threat to more formulaic writers, he said. “The trouble is that these creatures learn very quickly,” he said, adding that this could be worrying for writers of genre literature like thrillers and science fiction, where originality is less important.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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