Israel's troops in the north. Gallant: new ‘centre of gravity’ of the war

Today's news: The Japanese company Icom says pagers used in Lebanon explosion out of production for 10 years; In Malaysia 49 Immigration Department officials arrested for smuggling workers into the country; Japanese child killed in nationalist attack yesterday in Shenzhen; 1500 Samsung workers have been protesting for 11 days in Tamil Nadu.

ISRAEL - LEBANON

After the death of at least 14 people and over 450 injured in a second day of explosions across Lebanon, with yesterday's attack apparently targeting Hezbollah's portable radios, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the army is diverting troops to the north, where the ‘centre of gravity’ of the war has shifted. Gallant made these statements at Israel's northernmost airbase, in the midst of Israeli attacks on telecommunications equipment in Lebanon.

JAPAN

Japanese company Icom said today that it had stopped 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 to October 2014,’ reads a statement. ‘Production of the batteries required to operate the main unit was also discontinued and a hologram seal was not applied to distinguish counterfeit products.’

MALAYSIA

49 officials of the Malaysian Immigration Department - including a senior official - were arrested by law enforcement officers in connection with an association that allegedly smuggled foreign workers into the country. The senior official - a 40-year-old man - was allegedly the mastermind behind an operation at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

CHINA - JAPAN

The 10-year-old Japanese boy stabbed by an attacker on his way to school in Shenzhen, China, yesterday has died. A nationalist attack, which occurred on the days commemorating the invasion of Manchuria. Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said he died in the early hours of today. ‘It should never happen in any country.’ Japan called on China to provide a detailed explanation of the events and to take strong security measures.

INDIA

For the past 11 days, some 1,500 workers of the South Korean company Samsung Electronics have been on strike in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, causing severe disruptions in production. The striking workers are meeting daily at a plot of land near the factory that has existed for 17 years and are demanding that Samsung recognise their newly formed union, the Samsung India Labour Welfare Union (SILWU). The protest is among the largest Samsung has witnessed in recent years as Modi courts foreign investment.

RUSSIA

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the decree increasing the total number of members of the Russian Armed Forces to 2.38 million, including 1.5 million actual soldiers, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on this decision as ‘justified by the hostile atmosphere on the western borders, and the instability on the eastern ones’.

KAZAKHSTAN

Kazakhstan's Minister of Tourism presented the figures for the first half of 2024, which saw the arrival of 566.5 thousand tourists, over 50 thousand more than the previous year, mainly from Russia (186 thousand) and China (70 thousand), but also from many other countries, starting with India (53 thousand), Turkey (30 thousand) and the USA with 20 thousand, with great prospects for the sector's development.

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