World News

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea used multiple short-range missiles in its latest missile launch on Tuesday, South Korea’s military said.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Ed Davies)

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Nine beaches in Sydney, including well-known Manly beach, were closed to bathers on Tuesday after small white and grey balls of debris washed up on the shores at the height of the summer holiday season.

Northern Beaches Council said it was working on safely removing the matter. Most of the samples of the ball-shaped debris were the size of marbles, with some larger, it said in a statement.

Sydney’s ocean beaches, famed for golden sand and clean water, draw tourists from around the globe.

Beachgoers were advised to avoid Manly, Dee Why, Long Reef, Queenscliff, Freshwater, North and South Curl Curl, North Steyne and North Narrabeen beaches until further notice and keep away from the material while the clean-up and investigations continued.

Authorities said they were working closely with the state’s environmental agency to collect samples of the debris for testing.

Last October, several beaches including the iconic Bondi east of downtown Sydney were shut after thousands of black balls appeared on the shores.

An inquiry later found that those balls were formed from fatty acids, chemicals similar to those in cosmetics and cleaning products, as well as hair, food waste and other materials associated with wastewater.

(Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Sonali Paul)

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MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines said China’s deployment of its largest coast guard vessel inside Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) was alarming and clearly meant to intimidate fishermen operating around a contested shoal in the South China Sea.

“We were surprised about the increasing aggression being showed by the People’s Republic of China in deploying the monster ship,” National Security Council spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Manila has lodged a protest over the presence of the 165 m (541 ft) long vessel Chinese coast guard vessel 5901, which was spotted 77 nautical miles off the coast of Zambales province, and demanded its withdrawal from the EEZ, Malaya said.

“It is an escalation and provocative,” Malaya said, saying the presence the vessel was “illegal” and “unacceptable”.

The Philippine Coast Guard said it had deployed two of its largest vessels to drive away the Chinese vessel.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Monday that its coast guard’s “patrol and law enforcement activities” were “reasonable, lawful and beyond reproach”.

Tensions between the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, and Beijing have escalated over the past two years due to overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

In 2016, an international tribunal ruled China’s claims to large swathes of the disputed waterway had no basis, a decision Beijing rejects.

China’s expansive claims overlap with the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The disputed waterway is a strategic shipping route through which about $3 trillion of annual commerce moves.

(Reporting by Mikhail Flores and Karen Lema; Editing by John Mair)

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By Panu Wongcha-um

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s political heavyweight Thaksin Shinawatra believes Southeast Asia’s second largest economy should push to legalise online gambling, which he said could net the government as much as 100 billion baht ($2.89 billion) in annual revenues.

Although without a formal role in government, the former prime minister, 75, is one of the most influential figures in Thai politics and is widely seen as a power centre behind the premiership of his 38-year-old daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

Speaking at an event in Bangkok late on Monday, just hours after the Thai cabinet approved a draft law to legalise casinos, Thaksin said the government was coming up with ways to control access to, and tax revenue from, online gambling.

“Online gambling has two to four million Thai users with savings of 300 billion baht and gains and losses of about 500 billion per year,” said Thaksin.

“If we can tax 20% … we would get more than 100 billion per year,” he said.

While most forms of gambling are illegal in Thailand, it is hugely popular and successive governments led or backed by Thaksin have pushed to legalise it to create jobs and boost tourism, arguing huge sums of money are being lost that can be turned into state revenue.

The government was working on an identification system to control access to online gaming that would prevent underage use and allow the monitoring of gambling addicts, Thaksin said.

“We would have like a passport to control who can play,” he said, without elaborating.

Thaksin also made a push for Thailand’s financial institutions to be more open to cryptocurrency, citing incoming U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance, including his appointment of crypto deregulation advocate Paul Atkins as the head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

He said the Thai’s SEC need to have more digital approach, like “allowing trade of stablecoin, or coin that are backed by assets”.

The Thai government is already looking to allow using crypto as a form of payment, with the resort island of Phuket a possible site for a pilot, he said.

“There will be no risk, it is just another currency in the world,” Thaksin said.

($1 = 34.6500 baht)

(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um; Editing by Devjyot Ghoshal, Martin Petty)

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LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t told details of her long-time art adviser’s double life as a Soviet spy because palace officials didn’t want to add to her worries, newly declassified documents reveal.

The files about royal art historian Anthony Blunt are among a trove from the intelligence agency MI5 released Tuesday by Britain’s National Archives. They shed new light on a spy ring linked to Cambridge University in the 1930s, whose members spilled secrets to the Soviet Union from the heart of the U.K. intelligence establishment.

Blunt, who worked at Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was under suspicion for years before he finally confessed in 1964 that, as a senior MI5 officer during World War II, he had passed secret information to Russia’s KGB spy agency.

In one of the newly released files, an MI5 officer notes that Blunt said he felt “profound relief” at unburdening himself. In return for information he provided, Blunt was allowed to keep his job, his knighthood and his social standing – and the queen was apparently kept in the dark.

In 1972, her private secretary, Martin Charteris, told MI5 chief Michael Hanley that “the queen did not know and he saw no advantage in telling her about it now; it would only add to her worries and there was nothing that could done about him.”

The government decided to tell the monarch in 1973, when Blunt was ill, fearing a media uproar once Blunt died and journalists were able to publish stories without fear of libel suits.

Charteris reported that “she took it all very calmly and without surprise,” and “remembered that he had been under suspicion way back” in the early 1950s. Historian Christopher Andrew says in the official history of MI5 that the queen had previously been told about Blunt in “general terms.”

Blunt was publicly unmasked as a spy by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons in November 1979. He was finally stripped of his knighthood, but never prosecuted, and died in 1983 at the age of 75.

Files held by Britain’s secretive intelligence services usually remain classified for several decades, but the agencies are inching toward more openness. Some of the newly released documents will feature in an exhibition, entitled “MI5: Official Secrets,” opening at the National Archives in London later this year.

Two of the Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. A third, Kim Philby, continued to work for foreign intelligence agency MI6 despite falling under suspicion. As evidence of his duplicity mounted, he was confronted in Beirut in January 1963 by his friend and fellow MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott.

The declassified files include Philby’s typed confession and a transcript of his discussion with Elliott.

In it, Philby admitted he had betrayed Konstantin Volkov, a KGB officer who tried to defect to the West in 1945, bringing with him details of moles inside British intelligence – including Philby himself. As a result of Philby’s intervention, Volkov was abducted in Istanbul, taken back to Moscow and executed.

Elliott reported that Philby said that if he had his life to lead again, he would probably have behaved in the same way.

“I really did feel a tremendous loyalty to MI6. I was treated very, very well in it and I made some really marvelous friends there,” Philby said, according to the transcript. “But the overruling inspiration was the other side.”

Philby told Elliott that the choice faced now that he was exposed was “between suicide and prosecution.” Instead, he fled to Moscow, where he died in 1988.

The Cambridge spies have inspired myriad books, plays movies and TV shows, including the 2023 series “ A Spy Among Friends,” starring Guy Pearce as Philby and Damian Lewis as Elliott. Blunt featured in a 2019 episode of “ The Crown,” played by Samuel West.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted central Israel early Tuesday, causing sirens to blare and people to flee into bomb shelters. Several Israeli strikes also hit the Gaza Strip overnight and early on Tuesday, as Israel and Hamas appear to be inching closer to a phased ceasefire agreement

The Israeli military said it made several attempts to intercept a missile launched from Yemen and “the missile was likely intercepted.” The Magen David Adom emergency service in Israel said there were no injuries from the missile or falling debris, but some people suffered injuries when running to shelters.

Israel’s military also said an earlier missile was intercepted before it entered Israeli territory.

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have held Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since 2014, have launched direct attacks on Israel and some 100 commercial ships as part of their campaign over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The rebels did not immediately acknowledge the attack, though it can take hours or even days for them to claim an assault.

In central Gaza, at least six people — two women and their four children aged between 1 month and 9 years old — were killed by Israeli strikes that hit an area in Deir al Balah where displaced people live in tents. One woman — the mother of two of the boys killed — was pregnant. The other woman was killed together with her daughter and son.

The information was confirmed by Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, which received the bodies.

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By Essi Lehto

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Identifying suspect ships and limiting their activities is the most efficient way to protect critical undersea infrastructure, European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen told Reuters on Monday.

Baltic Sea nations are on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The NATO military alliance, of which Finland is now a member, has said it will boost its presence in the region.

Virkkunen, who will participate in a Baltic Sea NATO members meeting in Helsinki on Tuesday, is the EU Commission’s new executive vice-president in charge of security.

She said nations bordering the Baltic Sea should better prepare for infrastructure damage and intervene when worrying ships’ movements are detected.

“The most effective way would be to intervene in advance in the traffic and movement of these ships,” Virkkunen said in a telephone interview, referring to “risky ships”, a term she did not elaborate on.

“We need to see what new technologies can be used and how we can share this joint situation picture more effectively and more quickly so that we can combat these risks,” she said.

Finnish police last month seized a tanker carrying Russian oil and said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed.

A lawyer representing the owner of the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S tanker, Caravella LLC FZ, earlier told Reuters that intercepting a ship outside a country’s regional waters was essentially a hijacking.

The Cook Islands maritime authority said in a statement it was investigating the Eagle S case with the assistance of the Finnish government.

Finland’s customs service has said it believes the Eagle S is part of a so-called shadow fleet of tankers Russia uses to circumvent sanctions on its oil.

Moscow has said Finland’s seizure of the ship is not a matter for Russia.

(Reporting by Essi Lehto, editing by Anne Kauranen, Terje Solsvik and Hugh Lawson)

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Report: Israel and Hamas Receive Final Draft of Ceasefire Agreement From Qatar

Qatar has presented a “final” draft ceasefire and hostage release agreement to Israel and Hamas, aiming to end the devastating war in Gaza, an official familiar with the negotiations told Reuters on Monday.

The breakthrough in talks reportedly occurred after midnight in Doha, following high-level discussions involving Israel’s intelligence chiefs, US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

US President Joe Biden has urged urgency in reaching an agreement before his administration concludes on January 20. Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, reiterating the importance of a ceasefire, the immediate return of hostages, and increased humanitarian aid to Gaza, the White House said in a statement.

The negotiations come as the war enters its 15th month. Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza following a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and resulted in more than 250 hostages being taken. Since then, over 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, with much of the territory destroyed and a majority of its population displaced.

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BEIJING (Reuters) – A rural county in the Chinese region of Tibet, still feeling tremors from last week’s magnitude 6.8 earthquake, was jolted on Monday night by two powerful aftershocks barely a minute apart.

A magnitude 4.9 quake struck Tingri county at 8:57 p.m. local time (1257 GMT), according to China Earthquake Networks Center. That was followed by a magnitude 5.0 aftershock a minute later whose epicentre was just 9km from last week’s quake.

There were no immediate reports of casualties, Chinese state media said, following the magnitude 5.0 aftershock, which struck at a very shallow depth of 10km.

The Jan. 7 earthquake, the fifth-strongest in China since the destructive 2008 Sichuan temblor, left at least 126 people dead and injured 338 in Tibet.

More than 47,000 people in Tingri had to be swiftly resettled in tents and prefab houses, in a high-altitude environment where nighttime temperatures in winter plunge to as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit).

Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are often hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Tingri, which sits atop the zone where the Indian plate pushes under Tibet, is particularly vulnerable.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Alison Williams and Toby Chopra)

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LONDON (Reuters) – At least 65 oil tankers have dropped anchor at multiple locations, including off the coasts of China and Russia, since the United States announced a new sanctions package on Jan. 10, ship tracking data showed on Monday.

Five of those tankers were stationary off Chinese ports and a further seven dropped anchor off Singapore, with others halting near Russia in the Baltic Sea and the Far East, according to Reuters’ analysis based on MarineTraffic and LSEG ship tracking data.

The U.S. Treasury on Friday imposed sanctions on Russian oil producers Gazprom Neft SIBN.MM and Surgutneftegaz, as well as on 183 vessels that have shipped Russian oil, as it targets the revenues Moscow has used to fund its war with Ukraine.

The halt in trading for these tankers adds to further pressure on vessels already hit by previous U.S. sanctions.

These include another 25 oil tankers that were stationary around various locations, including off Iranian ports and also near to the Suez Canal, ship tracking analysis showed on Monday.

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul; editing by Mark Heinrich and Sharon Singleton)

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