Today’s news: Japanese company Icom has not manufactured the radios involved in the explosions in Lebanon for 10 years. In Malaysia, 49 officials from the Immigration Department are arrested for smuggling workers into the country. A Japanese child dies in a nationalist attack yesterday in Shenzhen. 1,500 Samsung workers have been protesting for 11 days in Tamil Nadu.
ISRAEL – LEBANON
Following the deaths of at least 14 people and the wounding of more than 450 in a second day of explosions across Lebanon, with yesterday’s attack apparently targeting Hezbollah’s portable radios, the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant said the army is diverting troops to the northwhere the “center of gravity” of the war has shifted. Gallant made the remarks at Israel’s northernmost air base amid Israeli attacks on telecommunications equipment in Lebanon.
JAPAN
The Japanese company Icom has announced today that has ceased production of the radio model involved in the recent explosions in Lebanon 10 years ago. “The IC-V82 is a portable radio that was produced and exported, including to the Middle East, from 2004 until October 2014,” a statement said. “Production of the batteries needed to operate the main unit was also discontinued and a holographic seal to distinguish counterfeit products was not applied.”
MALAYSIA
49 Malaysian Immigration Department officials – including a senior official – were arrested by law enforcement in connection with a syndicate that allegedly smuggled foreign workers into the country. The senior official – a 40-year-old man – was allegedly the mastermind of an operation carried out at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
CHINA – JAPAN
10-year-old Japanese boy stabbed to death yesterday by an attacker on her way to school in Shenzhen, China. This is a nationalist attack, which occurred on the days commemorating the invasion of Manchuria. Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said the boy died early this morning. “This should never happen in any country.” Japan has asked China for a detailed explanation of the incident and for strict security measures to be adopted.
INDIA
For 11 days now, about 1,500 workers at South Korean company Samsung Electronics are on strike in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, causing severe disruption to production. Striking workers gather daily on a plot of land near the 17-year-old factory and demand that Samsung recognise their newly formed union, the Samsung India Labour Welfare Union (SILWU). The protest is one of the biggest at Samsung in recent years as Modi courts foreign investment.
RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree increasing the total strength of the Russian Armed Forces to 2.38 million, including 1.5 million real soldiers, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing the decision as “justified by the hostile atmosphere on the western borders and instability on the eastern ones.”
KAZAKHSTAN
The Minister of Tourism of Kazakhstan presented the figures for the first half of 2024, in which the arrival of 566,500 tourists was recorded, more than 50,000 more than the previous year, mainly from Russia (186,000) and China (70,000), but also from many other countries, starting with India (53,000), Turkey (30,000) and the USA with 20,000, with great prospects for development of the sector.
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