Japanese jets fire warning flares at Russian plane for first time
Japanese fighter jets fired warning flares at a Russian reconnaissance plane after it repeatedly breached the neighbouring country’s airspace, Tokyo said, as tensions rise over Moscow’s increasing military cooperation with China in the region.
A Russian Il-38 military patrol plane entered Japanese airspace for up to a minute over three instances near the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, above Rebun Island, the defence ministry said.
The military scrambled an undisclosed number of F-15 and F-35 fighter jets which fired flares at the Russian aircraft after it apparently ignored their warnings, defence minister Minoru Kihara said.
“The airspace violation was extremely regrettable,” Mr Kihara said.
He said Japan “strongly protested” to Russia through diplomatic channels and demanded preventive measures.
“We will carry out our warning and surveillance operations as we pay close attention to their military activities,” he said, calling the use of flares a legitimate response to the alleged airspace violation.
“We plan to use it without hesitation,” he said.
The incident took place the same day as Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida met with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in New York and discussed Tokyo’s energy aid to Kyiv as its war against Russia grinds on into the third year.
“Restoring our energy supply after Russian shelling and preparing for winter are tasks we are actively working on now,” Mr Zelensky said in a post on the Telegram app.
“Together with prime minister Fumio Kishida, we discussed the situation in the energy sector.”
Japan is one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in Asia, giving substantial material and financial support, including $4.5bn this year alone.
Japan has also provided Kyiv equipment for restoring and increasing the capacity of its electricity network to get through winter amid Russia‘s continued strikes on energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Japanese defence officials have voiced concerns over Russia and China stepping up military cooperation in the region, with Chinese warplanes engaging in assertive activity around Japanese waters.
These concerns have prompted Tokyo to significantly reinforce the defences of southwestern Japan, including remote islands that are considered key to Japan’s defence strategy in the region.
Earlier in September, another Russian military aircraft flew around southern Japanese airspace. It was after a Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft briefly violated Japan’s southern airspace in late August.
According to Japan’s military, it scrambled jets nearly 669 times between April 2023 and March 2024, about 70 per cent of the time against Chinese military aircraft, though these incidents did not include airspace violations.
Russia and Japan have been locked in a territorial dispute over islands near Hokkaido that were seized by the Soviet Union during the final days of World War II.
Moscow is yet to issue a response to Tokyo’s allegations.
Man admits to burying girlfriend in cement as 16-year cold case solved
Police in South Korea arrested a man who reportedly confessed to killing his girlfriend 16 years ago after her body was discovered in a suitcase encased in cement on his apartment balcony.
The man, now in his 50s, admitted to striking her with a blunt object during a heated argument in 2008 when they were living together in an apartment in the southern city of Geoje, police said.
After her death due to the trauma to her head, he buried her body in the suitcase under bricks and cement on the balcony, where it remained undetected for years, they said.
Fingerprint analysis confirmed that the body, preserved inside the suitcase, was the missing woman. An autopsy revealed she had died from blunt force trauma to the head.
“The body hadn’t completely decomposed to bones, allowing us to identify her using fingerprints,” the local police were quoted as saying by AFP.
The body was only discovered in the apartment, which the landlord had been using as a storage space, last month by a maintenance worker who was there for drilling to repair a rooftop balcony leak.
At the time of the woman’s disappearance, the man told the landlord they had broken up, and with no physical evidence or leads, the investigation went cold.
The unidentified man continued living in the apartment for eight more years until he was imprisoned on drug charges in 2017. Unable to clear out his belongings, the landlord left the unit vacant until a court-ordered eviction was completed in 2020.
The man also confessed to discarding her mobile phone and the murder weapon in the sea off the coast of Geoje, according to The Korea Times.
A police officer was quoted as saying by Hankook Ilbo: “The landlord, who lived elsewhere, used the room as a storage space. The concrete structure was located on a balcony separate from the rooftop room, making it difficult to notice from inside the room.”
The woman had lost contact with her own family and in 2011 when they visited Geoje, they reported her missing, three years after her murder.
After the discovery of the body, police swiftly identified the boyfriend as the prime suspect and arrested him on 19 September in the southeastern city of Yangsan, where he had been residing. The man is now in police custody and faces murder charges.
India confirms first case of mpox clade 1b that sparked global warning
The Indian health ministry confirmed the first case of the fast-spreading clade 1b mpox variant that triggered a public health emergency alert from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
A man who travelled from the United Arab Emirates to the southern Indian state of Kerala has been detected with the new variant, health ministry spokesperson Manisha Verma said.
The global health emergency has reached the world’s most populated nation after the deadly clade 1b variant was first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and began spreading to neighbouring African countries.
The WHO declared mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – a public health emergency in August as the highly contagious variant has killed at least 635 people in DR Congo this year.
The clade 1b strain of mpox was detected in a 38-year-old patient who was admitted to a government hospital in the Malappuram district of Kerala last week after reporting symptoms of fever and rashes, according to reports.
Around 55 people who have been identified as contacts of the patient are at a potential risk.
About 29 friends and family members as well as 37 co-passengers on his flight are being monitored at home for the symptoms of disease after being identified as his contacts. But none of them has shown any mpox symptoms so far, Malappuram district’s nodal officer, Dr Shubin C, told Reuters on Monday.
It comes days after the Indian health ministry clarified that its first new mpox case involved the older strain of the virus and not the deadlier one linked to the current global health emergency.
The mpox strain found in a young man from Haryana who had arrived from an affected country was not from the current outbreak but it was the clade 2 strain, it said.
India has reported about 30 cases and one death from the older strain, known as clade 2, between 2022 and March this year.
The government health agencies have been on alert and gearing up for the spread of the strain in the densely-populated country where many travel overseas in search of job opportunities. Many international airports such as Bengaluru have placed thermal scanners to boost vigilance.
The country has more than two dozen labs equipped to test mpox and has been ramping up sensitisation of health teams in vulnerable areas, the health ministry said in August.
Two strains of mpox spreading in Congo – the endemic form of the virus, clade 1, and the new clade 1b strain – have caused alarm across the globe.
Mpox transmits through close physical contact, including sexual contact, but unlike previous global pandemics such as Covid-19 there is no evidence it spreads easily through the air.
Meryl Streep says cats have more rights than women in Afghanistan
A female cat has more freedom in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan today than a woman, Meryl Streep said at the United Nations on Monday, stating that the world has been upended.
“Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today, because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban,” the Hollywood actor said.
She joined several prominent Afghan women activists at the event “The Inclusion of Women in the Future of Afghanistan” on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
“A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not and a woman may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. This is odd,” she said, referring to the Taliban’s latest edict for Afghan women, banning their voices and presence from public spaces.
Women in Afghanistan, nearly half the population, have been banned by the Taliban from attending high school, colleges and universities. It further restricts women from working in a horrific repeat of its 90s rule on the country.
Afghan women are not allowed to step outside their homes and need to be accompanied by a male guardian, father or husband (mehram) or face punishment by the local Taliban leaders. They are also prohibited from entering public parks, gymnasiums and salons, most of which have been shut down since August 2021 after the Taliban took control of power in Afghanistan.
“The way that … this society has been upended is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world,” Streep said, as she called on the international community to intervene on behalf of women to “stop the slow suffocation of entire half of the population”.
“I feel that the Taliban, since they have issued over 100 edicts in Afghanistan, stripping women and girls of their education and employment, their freedom of expression and movement, they have effectively incarcerated half their population,” she said.
The multi-award winning actor also called on the Sunni community nations to intervene as the Taliban claim to be a Sunni Islamist movement.
Streep also pointed out women comprised most of Afghanistan’s civil servants in the 1970s, before the nation plunged into wars over the next five decades.
The Taliban have outright rejected the foreign criticism of its harsh edicts on Afghan women, calling it an internal matter of Afghanistan. However the group is denied recognition by the international community, which has asked the Taliban leaders to restore the basic human rights of women.
The Taliban say they respect rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
“Without educated women, without women in employment, including in leadership roles, and without recognising the rights and freedoms of one-half of its population, Afghanistan will never take its rightful place on the global stage,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
Viral Olympic shooter Kim Ye-ji lands first acting gig as assassin
South Korean pistol shooter Kim Ye-ji, who won both a silver medal and the internet at the Paris Olympics, is soon going to be on screens in a role everyone wanted to see her: an assassin.
Kim, 32, took over the internet the second she stepped onto the shooting range at the Olympics in August. Social media couldn’t stop gushing about her all-black style, quiet confidence, calm demeanor, the casual hand-in-pocket stance, and her overall “main character” energy.
Now, she is bringing that energy into playing an assassin in a new film titled Crush, a short-form series of the global film project Asia, produced by Seoul-based entertainment firm Asia Lab.
Asia, directed by Lee Jung-sub, follows the stories of individuals confronting racial hatred and discrimination, and stars different actors from Asian countries. Thai actor Pakorn Chatborrirak, Indian actor Anushka Sen, Malaysian actor Sean Lee, Malaysian singer Daiyan Trisha and Korean actor Jang Yoon-young all star in the film, which is still in production.
“Kim expressed that she is both nervous and thrilled as she takes her first acting role as a captivating assassin alongside world-renowned actors in the spin-off of Asia, a major global project by Asia Lab,” said You Min-guk, the CEO of Kim’s agency Plfil, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily.
“That the series will be a huge gift to fans around the world when it is soon released.”
Kim will be seen alongside Indian actor and influencer Sen, who is popular in South Korea. “The joint casting of Sen and Kim as assassins in the Asia spin-off series will mark a groundbreaking moment in paving the way for innovation and a new chapter in global short-form series,” said Asia Lab CEO and director Lee.
Kim won the silver medal in the women’s 10-metre air pistol competition at the Olympics and even caught the attention of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“She should be cast in an action movie. No acting required!” Musk posted on X at the time.
In August, Kim signed with South Korean talent agency Plfil to help her manage her newfound fame.
“Nearly 20 brands want to use her in advertisements and over 10 TV shows are interested in featuring her,” a Plfil spokesperson told the Korea Herald in August, adding that her athletic career remained her top priority.
Since going viral at the Olympics, Kim has been in a Louis Vuitton shoot for W Korea, a beauty campaign with Givenchy for Singles magazine, and appeared in a Vogue Korea magazine shoot as well.
Marxist political outsider takes oath as new Sri Lanka president
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist-leaning politician and leader of the People’s Liberation Front – JVP or Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna – has been sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new president after winning the election with 42.31 per cent of the vote.
On Monday morning, he pledged to address the country’s complex challenges, restore public confidence in politics, and tackle corruption. Mr Dissanayake, 55, led the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition and secured victory over opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and 36 other candidates in Saturday’s election.
He garnered 5,740,179 votes, while Mr Premadasa received 4,530,902 votes, and has pledged to work with other parties to turn around Sri Lanka’s severe economic troubles. “We have deeply understood that we are going to get a challenging country,” he said in a brief speech after assuming office on Monday. “We don’t believe that a government, a single party or an individual would be able to resolve this deep crisis.”
His victory follows a period of both political and fiscal turmoil that led to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation amid mass protests in 2022. Mr Rajapaksa fled the country and was replaced by his prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also ran in Saturday’s election but finished a distant third.
Mr Dissanayake’s meteoric rise from securing only 3 per cent of the vote in 2019 elevates his half-century-old leftist JVP party to an unprecedented role in the political landscape of Sri Lanka, which has been completely reshaped by grassroots protests over the past two years.
He was first elected to the parliament in 2000 and briefly served as the agriculture and irrigation minister under the then president Chandrika Kumaratunga. He ran for president for the first time in 2019 but lost to Mr Rajapaksa.
“The people have placed their trust in me and my political movement,” Mr Dissanayake said on Sunday evening after he was officially declared the winner by the country’s election commission. “Everyone – those who voted and didn’t vote for me – we have a responsibility to take this country forward.”
This election marked the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that a presidential race required a second round of counting, as none of the candidates achieved the necessary 50 per cent of votes.
In Sri Lanka’s ranked-choice election system, voters can either select one candidate or list up to three candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives 50 per cent or more of the votes, a second round of counting takes into account the preferences of voters whose first choice did not make it to the top two.
In his victory speech, Mr Dissanayake called for unity among all Sri Lankans, including the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslim communities, stating that a “new renaissance will rise from this shared strength and vision”.
“The dream we have nurtured for centuries is finally coming true. This achievement is not the result of any single person’s work but the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of you. Your commitment has brought us this far, and for that, I am deeply grateful. This victory belongs to all of us,” he said in a post on X.
“I will do my best to fully restore the people’s confidence in politicians,” Mr Dissanayake said after taking his oath.
“I am not a conjurer, I am not a magician,” he added. “There are things I know and things I don’t know, but I will seek the best advice and do my best. For that, I need the support of everyone.”
Alan Keenan of International Crisis Group told Al Jazeera that Mr Dissanayake – “a charismatic campaigner and speaker” – tapped into the concerns of Sri Lankan voters with his anti-corruption and pro-working-class campaign.
“He is fighting for a system change. That’s a very high bar, [there are] high expectations from a lot of supporters,” he said.
Experts said Mr Dissanayake’s presidency will need to address two key voids in Sri Lanka’s politics – the loss of faith in the Rajapaksa family, which dominated the leadership for about 15 years, and the gap in centre-left politics left by the Rajapaksas’ shift toward the right.
Mr Dissanayake has previously said he considers Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara one of his heroes. He positioned his National People’s Power coalition, led by JVP, as the best choice to address public demands for reforming Sri Lanka’s political patronage and corruption. He introduced new leaders, emphasised outreach to women affected by the economic crisis, and moderated his party’s previously radical Marxist messaging.
His messaging appears to have resonated with voters. “I’m voting for the Compass this time,” Saman Ratnasiri, 49, an auto-rickshaw driver in Colombo told The New York Times, referring to the election symbol of Mr Dissanayake’s coalition. He said he had never voted for Mr Dissanayake before but wanted to give him a chance. “If we don’t get it right this time also, then I might as well forget about this country.”
In the early 1990s, while at university, Mr Dissanyake became politically active and joined the JVP party – known for its armed uprisings in 1971 and 1987-89. The JVP, which represented the oppressed rural Sinhalese youth, sought to overthrow what it saw as exploitative and feudalistic political and economic systems through a hardline Marxist ideology.
Perhaps the first item in Mr Dissanayake’s in-tray will be what to do with the country’s bailout deal. He has criticised policies of austerity under Mr Wickremesinghe and has said he is committed to ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), vowing to pursue changes that will benefit the country while upholding existing financial agreements. It is unclear how he will marry the two – and the next instalment of the country’s $3bn IMF loan depends on Sri Lanka’s continued compliance with its terms.
Row over seat reclining on plane lands couple on ‘no-fly’ list
Cathay Pacific has banned a couple from flying with them ever again after a row broke out with passenger over a reclining plane seat.
The Hong Kong-based airline revealed on Saturday that the couple had been added to their no-fly list, adding it has a “strict zero-tolerance policy” towards behaviours that disrespected other passengers, the BBC reported.
A Chinese woman posted on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, speaking out about her alleged experience with the couple on a flight from Hong Kong to London on 17 September.
In her post, the woman stated that a middle-aged couple had accused her of obstructing their view of the in-flight television while onboard a Cathay aircraft and asked her if she could straighten her seat.
When the woman refused, she claimed that the wife then stretched her legs out, putting them on the armrest of her seat, before starting to speak to her in Cantonese, cursing and slapping her arm.
“When she realised I couldn’t speak Cantonese, she started calling me ‘mainland girl’ in a derogatory tone,” she said, according to the BBC.
The woman went on to claim that the husband, who was seated directly behind her, “frantically pushed” the back of her seat. A clip on social media shows the chair vibrating as the man’s arms lay over the back of it. Another clip showed the wife raising her middle finger on the woman.
She said that she then sought assistance from a flight attendant, who suggested that she straighten her seat.
“I was shocked because it was not meal time, yet the flight attendant wanted me to compromise,” the woman said. “I rejected the suggestion.
“After some passengers spoke up for me, the flight attendant finally said I could switch seats. I felt it was absurd—what if no one had backed me up? Would I have just been left to deal with it on my own?”
Cathay Pacific said in a statement that it wanted to “sincerely apologise” for the “unpleasant experience”.
“We maintain a zero-tolerance policy for any behaviour that violates aviation safety regulations or disrespects the rights of other customers,” the airline said, according to CNN .
“We will deny future travel on any Cathay Group flights to the two customers involved in this incident.”
The woman later posted a follow-up video in which she said she thought the incident was “an isolated case and a personal issue; it doesn’t need to be blown out of proportion”, CNN reported.
“Whether on the plane or online, many Hong Kongers came to help and support me. There are still plenty of nice people in this world!” she added.
The woman’s post had been liked over 194,000 times as of Monday morning, causing many social media users to debate the etiquette of reclining your seat on planes.
Another woman also sparked online debate earlier this year after she took to social media asking her followers for advice over whether she should recline her seat back up at the request of another passenger.
“Y’all, this girl just shoved my seat forward and said I’m not allowed to recline for my 10-hour flight because it’s too much for her,” TikToker Taylor wrote on a video that gained four million views.
For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast
Ed Sheeran delights fans as he joins Diljit Dosanjh at Birmingham show
Ed Sheeran delighted fans with a surprise performance at Diljit Dosanjh’s Birmingham show on Sunday which was part of the Indian singer’s global Dil-Luminati Tour.
Dosanjh has been on a world tour since early 2024, performing to sold-out crowds across North America, Australia, and New Zealand, with shows lined up in Paris, London, Glasgow, and Amsterdam through September and October.
Sheeran joined Dosanjh on stage to loud applause as the latter introduced him: “Ed Sheeran aa gaya oye (Ed Sheeran has arrived).”
Together, the duo performed a mashup of Sheeran’s hit song “The Shape of You” and Dosanjh’s song “Naina”. Both Dosanjh and Sheeran shared videos on their social media of their performance.
In one of the videos, Dosanjh wrote, “My brother shut down Birmingham, what a night. Love & Respect. Thank You Birmingham Waleya baut pyar (lots of love)”.
Broadcaster BritAsia TV posted a video on X, adding that this performance “carries special significance as it marks a full-circle moment for Dosanjh, who held his first-ever live concert in the city exactly a decade ago with BritAsia TV”.
“The year of Diljiiiiit and the year of Naina,” commented Indian film producer Rhea Kapoor, who produced the Indian film Crew, where the song Naina is from.
Earlier this year in March, Dosanjh joined Ed Sheeran on stage in Mumbai to perform his hit track “Lover”. The 50,000-strong crowd was further excited when Sheeran joined in by singing the lyrics in Punjabi.
Tickets for Dosanjh’s Dil-Luminati Tour opened in India earlier this month and sold out within minutes, leaving fans crushed.
“This level of response has never happened in India before, not even for international artists. On the first day of the presale, 8,000-10,000 transactions were made in a single minute. We sold 100,000 tickets within 15 minutes,” tour organiser Janamjai Sehgal from Saregama India told NDTV.
Dosanjh’s popularity has seen massive highs since he first performed on a global stage at Coachella in 2023, and is often credited with putting Punjabi music on the map.
Sheeran was recently accompanied by Thor actor Chris Hemsworth at his concert in Romania on 24 August as part of the Australian actor’s documentary series, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, in which he takes on various challenges to explore issues people face such as pain, fear and social connection.