Today’s news: Taiwanese company Gold Apollo defends itself against accusations of manufacturing the devices that exploded in Lebanon. A Chinese aircraft carrier enters Japanese waters for the first time. In West Bengal, the police chief is dismissed after protests over rape in August. The United States urges Vietnam not to support links with Chinese submarines.
ISRAEL – LEBANON
Hezbollah vows to retaliate after blaming Israel for pager explosion which killed at least nine people and wounded 2,750 others, including many Hezbollah fighters. Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary condemned the blast as an “Israeli aggression.” For a Hezbollah official, the attack was the “biggest security breach” suffered by the group in almost a year of conflict with Israel. There is great concern about the possible repercussions of this event in Lebanon.
TAIWAN
After an initial accusation, the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said today that the locators used in the Lebanon detonations The AR-924s were not produced by Gold Apollo, but by a company called BAC, which has a license to use its brand. Images of the destroyed pagers, reviewed by Reuters, showed a format and stickers on the back compatible with pagers produced by Gold Apollo. The company said in a statement that the AR-924 model was manufactured and sold under its license by BAC, a Hungarian company.
CHINA – JAPAN
NHK The Japanese government has learned that a Chinese aircraft carrier briefly entered Japanese waters this morning. According to sources, the Liaoning sailed between two islands, Yonaguni and Iriomote, in Okinawa prefecture, southwest of Japan. This is the first time that a Chinese aircraft carrier has sailed in Japan’s contiguous zone. Under international law, ships from other countries are allowed to do so. But the law states that the coastal state can take necessary measures to prevent illegal acts in its territorial waters.
INDIA
West Bengal has agreed to remove the police chief of its capitalKolkata, after a meeting with doctors protesting the rape and murder of one of their colleagues in early August. Two other senior officials – the director of medical education and the director of health services – will also be removed, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said. The protests that began on August 9 are continuing.
VIETNAM – CHINA – USA
US urges Vietnam not to support Chinese cable-laying company HMN Technologies and other Chinese companies in their plans to build 10 new undersea links by 2030. Vietnam’s five aging major undersea connections, which link it to the global Internet, have suffered repeated failures, making new cables a top government priority. Since January, U.S. officials and companies have held at least a half-dozen meetings.
RUSSIA
According to Novaja Gazeta Evropa’s calculations, 93 minors were declared “terrorists and extremists” in Russia in 2024, a record in the past six years, 20 of whom were included on the list before the age of 16, including Egor Lauskis from St. Petersburg, who was 14 at the time of his arrest in February for setting fire to a railway switchboard.
GEORGIA
Leaders of the ruling Georgian Dream party have said that after their election victory they will ask forgiveness from “the brothers and sisters of South Ossetia” for the 2008 “five-day” war and will create a “Nuremberg tribunal” for the culprits, the then-President Saakašvili, now in prison, and his henchmen, the oppositionists from the National Movement.
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