Editor TLN
Other news of the day: Manila and Washington reactivate the anti-China alliance. Disgraced Chinese billionaire Jack Ma will be visiting professor at the University of Tokyo. India on the US blacklist on religious freedom and persecuted minorities. To re-enter the Arab world, Damascus vows to fight drug trafficking. A South Korean art student ate a Cattellan installation in Seoul.
ISRAEL – PALESTINE
An Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank, khader adnan, 44, died overnight in an Israeli jail after a nearly three-month hunger strike. The guards found him unconscious in his cell and he was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was confirmed dead. Following the announcement, they fired rockets from Gaza into Israel, causing no damage or casualties.
PHILIPPINES – UNITED STATES
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, received his Filipino counterpart Ferdinand Marcos at the White House and agreed revive the relationship between both historical allies, which had cooled under the rule of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. The leaders strengthened military cooperation -in anti-Chinese terms- on land, air, water, space and cyberspace. Washington will deliver to Manila three C-130 planes to patrol the seas.
JAPAN CHINA
Jack Ma will be greeted as visiting teacher at the University of Tokyo. The Alibaba founder will share “pioneering experiences and insights” in business management and innovation. Ma, 58, has kept a low profile after coming under fire from communist authorities; he also recently accepted an honorary professorship at the business school of the University of Hong Kong.
INDIA
For the fourth consecutive year, India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been included in the blacklisted by the American independent panel on religious freedom. In their 2022 report, USCIRF experts say the situation for religious minorities “continues to worsen” and the country is among “particularly concerning.” There are laws that violate the rights of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and Adivasis.
SYRIA
Damascus has pledged to end the drug trafficking across borders with Jordan and Iraq, a thriving trade that in the past was also exploited – according to accusations by critics – by the Assad family. The note was released after a meeting held yesterday with Arab diplomats to discuss the end of the Syrian conflict, which was attended by the foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
SOUTH KOREA
A South Korean art student ate a banana that was actually part of an installation created by Maurizio Cattelan. The young man justified himself by saying that he was “hungry” because he had not had breakfast. The work is entitled “Comedian” and is part of the sample “WE”. It consists of a specimen of the ripe fruit attached to a wall of the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul.
RUSSIA
Deacon Andrej Kuraev, one of the leading Russian Orthodox theologians and a former adviser to Kirill, has been definitively reduced to lay status. One of the causes of the measure is his explicit positions against the war and the patriarch himself, as well as the activities of the Vozvraščenie (“The Return”) foundation, aimed at restoring Russian religious culture and against the false “traditional moral values”.
UZBEKISTAN
In Uzbekistan, a referendum on amendments to the Constitution was held, which was approved with more than 90% of the votes. Voter turnout was 84.54% according to data provided by the vice-president of the electoral commission, Bakhrom Kučkarov, who also admitted some violations in various polling stations, although “they did not affect the development of the vote”.
