JAPAN
Cycling on phone banned
Cyclists using a mobile phone while riding could face up to six months in jail under new rules that entered into force yesterday. Those who breach the revised road traffic law can be punished with a maximum of six months in prison or a fine of up to ￥100,000 (US$660). “Making a call with a smartphone in your hand while cycling, or watching the screen, is now banned and subject to punishment,” the National Police Agency said in a leaflet. Some accidents caused by cyclists watching screens have resulted in pedestrian deaths, the government said. Under the new rules, cycling while drunk can land the rider with up to three years in prison or a fine of up to ￥500,000. Those who offer alcoholic drinks to cyclists face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to ￥300,000.
Photo: AFP
NORTH KOREA
Media hail new ICBM
Pyongyang yesterday said that a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) it test-launched is “the world’s strongest,” while experts said that it is too big to be useful in a war situation. The ICBM launched on Thursday flew higher and for a longer duration than any other weapon the nation has tested, but foreign experts say the test failed to show that Pyongyang has mastered some of the last remaining technological hurdles to possess functioning ICBMs that can strike the mainland US. The Korean Central News Agency identified the missile as a Hwasong-19 and called it “the world’s strongest strategic missile” and “the perfected weapon system.” Leader Kim Jong-un observed the launch, describing it as an expression of the nation’s resolve to respond to external threats to its security, it said. The color and shape of exhaust flames seen in media photographs of the launch suggest the missile uses preloaded solid fuel, which makes weapons more agile and harder to detect than liquid propellants that in general must be fueled beforehand. However, experts said the photos show that the ICBM and its launch vehicle are oversized, raising a serious question about their wartime mobility and survivability. “When missiles get bigger, what happens? The vehicles get larger, too. As the transporter-erector launchers get bigger, their mobility decreases,” said Lee Sang-min, an expert at South Korea’s Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. The Hwasong-19 was estimated to be at least 28m long, while advanced US and Russian ICBMs are less than 20m long.
Photo: EPA-EFE
PAKISTAN
Explosion kills seven
A bomb targeting police guarding polio vaccinators yesterday killed seven people, including five children, police said. The bomb targeted officers in the city of Mastung in Balochistan Province as they were traveling in a van to guard medical workers participating in a nationwide vaccine campaign, police said. “Seven individuals: one police officer, five children and one shopkeeper” were those killed in the attack at the city’s main market, senior officer Abdul Fatah told reporters. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic and vaccination teams are frequently targeted by militants waging a campaign against security forces.
Photo: AP
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
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