Editor TLN
Other news of the day: Beijing’s population registers its first demographic drop since 2003. Manila: the new bases for US troops will be spread throughout the country. New Israeli air strike on Aleppo. A strong earthquake shakes Afghanistan and Pakistan. A Russian conscript is granted the right not to participate in combat for religious reasons.
SOUTH KOREA
The prosecutors they prosecuted Lee Jae-myung, head of the Democratic Party, main opponent of the incumbent government. Lee is accused of abuse of power and corruption for events that occurred years ago, during his tenure as mayor of Seongnam (south of the capital, Seoul).
CHINA
For the first time since 2003, Beijing records a decrease in its population. Last year, the capital registered 5.72 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants, while births stopped at 5.67. The figures are in line with the demographic crisis that the country is going through, caused mainly by the “one child” policy, which was still in force until a few years ago.
PHILIPPINES
President Ferdinand Marcos Junior stated that the four new logistics bases available to US troops they will be spread across the country, including a province bordering the South China Sea. Manila maintains territorial disputes with China over a huge area of the sea.
ISRAEL-SYRIA
New israeli shelling near Aleppo, in northwestern Syrian territory. The attack reached an area close to the local airport, which had already been the target of recent operations. According to intelligence sources, the target was an arms depot run by Iranian units.
PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN
A 6.5 magnitude earthquake It shook the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the eastern Afghan provinces last night, leaving 13 dead and 90 wounded. The quake was also felt in India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.
RUSSIA
A conscript from Saint Petersburg, 23-year-old Pavel Mušumanskij, managed to get a court to recognize his right not to participate in military actions “due to his religious convictions”. The man argued that since he was a child he was educated in the deepest Christian faith. “When I take up arms, God will then ask me why I have taken the lives of other men, to save the one for which He himself died,” he declared.
GEORGIA
The fourth Georgian president, Georgij Margvelašvili, referred to the recent disagreements over the “foreign agents” law, stating that the ruling Georgian Dream party is not in a position to make any decisions: “Everything is decided personally by its founder Bidzina Ivanišvili, who consult with the Kremlin on every question”.
