Today's news: In China, the execution of the Zuhai bomber publicly announced two months after the massacre; In Thailand, hundreds of homosexual couples will marry on 23 January when the law legalising their marriage comes into force;  Pakistan inaugurates country's largest airport, built thanks to Beijing; Patriarch and Custos of the Holy Land say truce means resuption of pilgrimages for Jubilee Year.

ISRAEL - PALESTINE

Among the first executive orders signed yesterday by new US President Donald Trump was the lifting of sanctions imposed by Joe Biden against Israeli settlers and extreme right-wing groups involved in violence against Palestinians or in the occupation of land in the West Bank. The February 2024 measure targeted individuals and entities that ‘undermine peace, security and stability’. The White House tenant also said he was ‘not confident ’ in the holding of the truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

HOLY LAND

Church leaders in Jerusalem renew their appeal to Christians around the world to return to the Holy Land. Latin Patriarch and Custos, from the parvis of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, address pilgrims from all over the world asking them to come and visit the holy places in this Jubilee year 2025. Card. Pierbattista Pizzaballa urges to ‘also bring hope back here, in many Christian families’. Brother Francis Patton recalls the ‘very concrete dimension of solidarity’.

JAPAN

Tokyo intends to adopt a proactive approach to ‘active cyber defence’, allowing hackers working for the authorities to ‘attack’ preventively to avert or stop sabotage attempts. Police and Self-Defence Forces (SDF) experts will be able to infiltrate servers to neutralise the source of cyber attacks. The Liberal Democratic Party (Ldp) of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will present the bills in Parliament on 24 January.

CHINA

China announced yesterday that it had carried out the death sentence on Fan Weiqiu, the man who killed 35 people in the deadliest mass attack in years on 11 November in Zuhai. Also yesterday, CCTV reported that another court in the eastern province of Jiangsu carried out the death sentence for Xu Jiajin, a 21-year-old former student who attacked a vocational school in the city of Wuxi in the same days. The speed with which the death penalty was carried out and the spread of its news is an indication of the social alarm aroused by the increasingly recurrent outbreaks of violence in China.

THAILAND

Hundreds of LGBTQ couples will get married on 23 January, coinciding with the entry into force of the law recognising equal status with heterosexual unions. Thailand thus becomes the largest nation in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage, after Nepal and Taiwan. Thai society has long accepted fluid identities and relationships, but has lacked legislation to recognise them.

AFGHANISTAN

An Afghan prisoner in US custody for almost 20 years was freed in exchange for two US citizens. According to Kabul sources, Khan Mohammad had been arrested in the eastern province of Nangarhar and extradited, then sentenced to life imprisonment for narco-terrorism related offences. He was serving his sentence in the state of California. There is currently no official word on the released US citizens, but they could be Ryan Corbett and William McKenty.

PAKISTAN - CHINA

Pakistan's largest international airport, financed and built by China as part of the Belt and Road Initiative in the southwestern province of Balochistan, officially opened yesterday welcoming the first flight. The Gwadar slipway, along with the deepwater port of the same name, were built as part of the billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Cpec) and is considered essential for increasing regional trade and connectivity.

RUSSIA - UNITED STATES

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his congratulations to Donald Trump on the occasion of his inauguration. The Kremlin leader said he was ‘open to dialogue’ about the conflict in Ukraine, and appreciated the new US administration's willingness to re-establish direct contacts, as well as the Tycoon's statements against World War III.

KAZAKHSTAN

Arrests continue in Kazakhstan of journalists expressing their support for their colleague Temirlan Ensenbek, author of the satirical platform QazNews24, who has been imprisoned for over a month. The latest to end up in a cell was the journalist Asem Žapiševa, an activist of the protest movement Oyan, Qazaqstan! who had demonstrated in front of the theatre in Almaty.

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