Six In The Morning Wednesday 8 February 2023

 

Ukraine's Zelensky meets King at Buckingham Palace

Summary

1. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has met King Charles at Buckingham Palace after making a surprise trip to the UK
2. "Freedom will win - we know Russia will lose," he earlier told a joint session of the UK Parliament
3. He made a plea for fighter jets from the West, presenting the helmet of one of his most successful pilots with a message reading: "We have freedom, give us wings to protect it"
4. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had been tasked with investigating what planes the UK may be able to provide, according to Downing Street
5. However the spokesperson stressed that this was a "long-term" solution
6. Hundreds of MPs and peers packed into Westminster Hall to hear Zelensky speak to rapturous applause
7. It is Zelensky's first visit to the UK since Russia invaded his country, and his second international trip since the war began

MH17: ‘strong indications’ Putin signed off on supplying missile that hit plane

Investigators say findings suggest decision to provide Buk system to Donetsk separatists ‘taken at presidential level’

Pjotr Sauer

There are “strong indications” the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, personally signed off on a decision to supply the missile that downed flight MH17 in 2014, a team of international investigators has said.

The Boeing 777 was flying over eastern Ukraine when it was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile in July 2014, killing all 298 people onboard.

The Netherlands and Australia said in 2018 that Russia was responsible for the disaster, after investigators concluded the Buk missile used by Moscow-backed separatists of the self-declared republic in Donetsk had come from a Russian military base.

North Korea: Kim Jong Un visits troops with daughter

The rare sight came ahead of a 75th anniversary celebration for the country's army. Kim used the opportunity to praise the "irresistible might" of his military.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un brought his daughter to an event ahead of the 75th founding anniversary of the country's army, where he lauded his troops as the "strongest army in the world," state media reported on Wednesday.

This was the fourth known public appearance of Kim Ju Ae, aged around 9 or 10 years old. She was dressed just like her father in a black suit and white dress shirt, and walked down the red carpet holding his hand. Her mother and Kim's wife, Ri Sol Ju, was also present.

At the banquet held at the lodging quarters of the Korean People's Army's general officers, Kim praised the "irresistible might" of his nuclear-armed military, the official KCNA reported.

4 more arrested over Tokyo Olympics bid rigging

Prosecutors arrested a former operations executive at the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee and three others on Wednesday over bid-rigging allegations, as yet another corruption scandal surfaces in the wake of the global sports event.

Tokyo prosecutors arrested the former executive, Yasuo Mori, on suspicion he played a leading role in rigging bids for contracts related to games test events in violation of the anti-monopoly law.

They also arrested Koji Hemmi, a former executive at Japanese ad giant Dentsu Inc, and officials Yoshiji Kamata and Masahiko Fujino from event production companies Cerespo Co and Fuji Creative Corp, both firms that won contracts to plan test events.

Australia rejects a coal mine near Great Barrier Reef due to risk of ‘irreversible damage’

By Laura Paddison, CNN

Published 7:23 AM EST, Wed February 8, 2023

The Australian government on Wednesday turned down a proposal for a new open-cut coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, invoking environmental laws and the risk of “irreversible damage.”

The mining project, proposed by controversial Australian businessman Clive Palmer, would have been located less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the reef on the Queensland coastline, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) northwest of Brisbane.

Tanya Plibersek, the minister for the environment and water, indicated last year that she intended to reject the mine and formalized her decision on Wednesday. She said it was the first time a federal environment minister had used their powers under environmental laws to reject a mine.

Chinese thinkers debate their country’s future

China’s public intellectuals do not divide neatly into party faithful and dissidents. There’s a rich seam of debate on China’s place in the world that needs to be better known.

by David Ownby

As the recent 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) illustrated, President Xi Jinping aspires to equal, if not surpass, the status of Mao Zedong. To some commentators, he’s ‘the new Stalin’ (1). At a time of growing Sino-Western tensions, the West continues to view China through the lens of the cold war, with China in the role the Soviet Union once occupied: the main adversary and pre-eminent representative of autocratic forces in the world.

This view casts Chinese thinkers as the equivalent of Russian dissidents and refuseniks who risked being sent to the gulag simply for owning forbidden books; it makes China out to be a place with no real intellectual life outside the private sphere, or prisons. As a result, although it has become the world’s second most powerful country, the only Chinese intellectuals known in the West are dissidents such as the artist Ai Weiwei or the law professor Xu Zhangrun.