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.
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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