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.
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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