JAPAN
Mount Fuji goes online
Authorities yesterday announced an online booking system for Mount Fuji’s most popular trail to curb overtourism. To ease congestion on the Yoshida Trail, the preferred route for most hikers, the Yamanashi region is planning to cap daily entries to 4,000 people, who are to be charged US$13 each. However, to address some climbers’ fears that they would be rejected once the daily limit is reached, online bookings are also to be introduced for the first time. The system will guarantee people entry through a new gate, “allowing them to plan ahead,” said Katsuhiro Iwama, an official from the Yamanashi regional government. Online bookings open on Monday next week for the July-September hiking season. Each day at least 1,000 places are to be kept free for on-the-spot entry.
UNITED KINGDOM
Spies for HK charged
British police yesterday said three men had been charged with assisting Hong Kong’s foreign intelligence service after authorities made a series of arrests across England. London’s Metropolitan Police said a total of 11 people were detained earlier this month, nearly all of whom were arrested in the Yorkshire area. The three men were to appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later yesterday. Seven men and one woman who were not charged were released from custody, police added. “While these offences are concerning, I want to reassure the public that we do not believe there to be any wider threat to them,” Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said in a statement. The investigation is ongoing and the police did not provide further details on the charges.
GERMANY
Court confirms AfD extremist
A high court yesterday ruled that domestic security services could continue to treat the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a potentially extremist party, meaning they retain the right to subject it to surveillance. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, charged with protecting the democratic order from extremist threats, has classified the AfD as potentially extreme since 2021. The party, which continues to top polls in several eastern states that hold elections later this year, has come under increased scrutiny over allegedly racist remarks by its members and allegations that it harbored spies and agents for Russia and China in its midst. The potentially extremist designation means the party can be covertly surveilled, including via wiretapping and recruited informants inside the party.
AUSTRALIA
Plane lands wheels-up
A light plane with three people aboard yesterday landed safely without landing gear after circling an Australian airport for almost three hours to burn off fuel. The 53-year-old pilot and his passengers, a 60-year-old man and 65-year-old woman, walked unaided from the twin-turboprop Beechcraft Super King Air after landing on a runway at Newcastle Airport north of Sydney, Police Superintendent Wayne Humphrey said. The pilot “made a textbook wheels-up landing, which I was very happy to see,” Humphrey told reporters at the airport. Paramedics checked all three at the airport, but none needed to be taken to the hospital, he said. The plane had just taken off from Newcastle for a 180km flight north to Port Macquarie when the pilot raised the alarm about “issues with the landing gear,” Humphrey said. It landed on the tarmac about three hours later at 12:20pm without incident, video showed.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
RELEASE: The move follows Washington’s removal of Havana from its list of terrorism sponsors. Most of the inmates were arrested for taking part in anti-government protests Cuba has freed 127 prisoners, including opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, in a landmark deal with departing US President Joe Biden that has led to emotional reunions across the communist island. Ferrer, 54, is the most high-profile of the prisoners that Cuba began freeing on Wednesday after Biden agreed to remove the country from Washington’s list of terrorism sponsors — part of an eleventh-hour bid to cement his legacy before handing power on Monday to US president-elect Donald Trump. “Thank God we have him home,” Nelva Ortega said of her husband, Ferrer, who has been in and out of prison for the
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