Indonesia confirms buying used fighter jets for $800m - Bangkok Post

Indonesian Air Force's Jupiter aerobatic team (JAT) manoeuvre during a performance in Pekanbaru, Riau province, on May 28, 2023. (AFP photo)

JAKARTA: Indonesia confirmed on Wednesday it had bought 12 Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets previously used by Qatar, defending the nearly US$800 million deal as a fast way to upgrade the air force after it was criticised by lawmakers who said the planes were too old.

The defence ministry said in a statement that Indonesia had signed the deal for €733 million ($792 million) with Excalibur International a.s., a unit of Czech defence company Czechoslovak Group (CSG) in January. The planes would be delivered within 24 months of that date.

The deal, for nine jets with single seats and three with double seats, was first reported earlier on Wednesday by Indonesian media, who quoted lawmakers raising doubts about it.

"What is so urgent that we had to buy used and old jets?" the newspaper Kompas quoted lawmaker Tubagus Hasanuddin as saying.

According to the website of manufacturer Dassault Aviation, the model was first launched in 1967.

The ministry did not mention the age of the jets. It said they will come with three years of support service and pilot training.

"Indonesia needs fighter jets that could be delivered quickly to cover for the decline of combat readiness in the Indonesian Air Force's fleet," Edwin Adrian Sumantha, spokesperson for the defence ministry, said in a statement.

The country has long been seeking to overhaul its ageing air fleet which includes US-made F-16 and Russian Sukhoi Su-27 and Su-30 jets.

The ministry said plans to replace its F-5 Tiger jets with Su-35 had been hampered by US sanctions on Russia, adding that Jakarta has other plans to upgrade its fleet but that will take some time.

Indonesia announced plans to purchase 11 Su-35 jets from Russia in 2017, which it had intended to pay with cash and Indonesian commodities.

The country secured a deal to order 42 Rafale fighter jets for $8.1 billion in February. A planned purchase of F-15 fighter jets is also in advanced stages and awaiting final sign-off from the government, defence minister Prabowo Subianto said last year.

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2023-06-14 12:31:00Z
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Blinken to seek to 'responsibly manage' tense ties on rare China trip - CNA

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Antony Blinken will urge open communication to "responsibly manage" high tensions with China when he pays a rare visit to Beijing this weekend, US officials said.

The State Department confirmed that Blinken will travel this weekend to Beijing on the first trip by a top US diplomat in nearly five years, rescheduling a visit that was scrapped in February as the United States detected what it said was a Chinese spy balloon.

Ahead of the trip, Blinken spoke by telephone to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and stressed "the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage" the relationship, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Relations between the world's two largest economies have tanked in recent years over Taiwan, trade and human rights, among a litany of other issues.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the top State Department official for East Asia, said that the United States was "realistic" about what Blinken could achieve.

"We're not going to Beijing with the intent of having some sort of breakthrough or transformation," Kritenbrink told reporters.

Instead, Blinken is coming with a "sincere desire to manage our competition in the most responsible way possible".

The United States hopes the trip "will, at a minimum, reduce the risk of miscalculation so that we do not veer into potential conflict".

US policymakers across party lines have spoken of China as the foremost US competitor, even as President Joe Biden also focuses on countering Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

"We know efforts to shape or reform China over several decades have failed," said Kurt Campbell, who leads Asia policy at the White House.

"We expect China to be around - to be a major player - on the world stage for the rest of our lifetimes," he told reporters.

Campbell said the United States also expected more "provocative steps" by China over Taiwan.

China has accused the United States of stirring up trouble in Taiwan through arms sales and visits by senior lawmakers - allegations rejected by Washington, which says it seeks to preserve the status quo by helping Taipei defend itself.

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2023-06-14 13:05:00Z
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Top Chinese, US diplomats hold phone call - CNA

"China has always viewed and managed China-US relations in accordance with the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation put forward by President Xi Jinping," he added.

"Spoke tonight with PRC State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang by phone," Blinken said on Twitter. "Discussed ongoing efforts to maintain open channels of communication as well as bilateral and global issues."

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken had stressed "the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage the US-PRC relationship to avoid miscalculation and conflict" with Qin.

Blinken also "made clear the US would continue to use diplomatic engagements to raise areas of concern as well as areas of potential cooperation", Miller said.

Blinken is expected to arrive in Beijing on Jun 18, the first trip by a top US diplomat to China since his predecessor Mike Pompeo in October 2018, US officials have said on condition of anonymity.

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2023-06-14 06:21:49Z
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'I hope this is my last marriage': Malaysian great-grandmother, 62, marries 27-year-old man - The Straits Times

Age is certainly just a number for Malaysian great-grandmother Rokiah Samat who married a man 34 years her junior last year.

Housewife Madam Rokiah, 62, decided to tie the knot with Mr Mohammad Amin Jundail, 28, after knowing him for about a year.

“Even though he is much younger, I am confident that my husband will be able to take care of me until the end of my life and I hope this is my last marriage,” Malay daily Harian Metro quoted Madam Rokiah as saying.

A TikTok video of their unconventional union went viral, racking up 2.4 million views after it was posted four days ago.

Mr Amin, who is a masseur and sells beauty products, said he first messaged Madam Rokiah on October 2021 after coming across her TikTok account.

He had initially wanted to be just friends with her but, over time, he realised that he has feelings for Madam Rokiah, who has 10 children, 22 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

So he decided to travel from his hometown of Semporna in eastern Sabah to meet her. Madam Rokiah lives in the Pasir Puteh district of the east coast state of Kelantan.

“I arrived in Peninsula Malaysia on December 2021 but I got a job as a masseur in Johor. A month later, I finally met her on my birthday, which was on Jan 10 last year, at her house,” Mr Amin told Malay portal mStar Online.

They got engaged on June 6, 2022 and tied the knot three months later, on Sept 9.

Madam Rokiah said she decided to accept Mr Amin as her life partner as they are compatible and he gets along with her children.

“I do not like to live with my children, I am more comfortable living on my own. But at the same time, I need a life partner, and that is why I remarried.

“After all, this is God’s provision. For me, what is more important is not the age but getting an honest and sincere husband,” she said.

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2023-06-14 05:55:00Z
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Two killed in shooting at Japan army training range; teen suspect arrested - The Straits Times

TOKYO – Two soldiers were killed and a third wounded when a fellow recruit opened fire at a training range in central Japan on Wednesday, the military said.

“During a live-bullet exercise as part of new-personnel training, one Self-Defence Forces (SDF) candidate fired at three personnel,” the Ground Self-Defence Force (GSDF) said in a statement.

“The death of another person has been confirmed of the three who were shot at,” the GSDF added later, after earlier announcing a first death and two injured individuals.

Earlier, government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said a suspect had been detained, but gave no further details.

Local police told AFP the shooter was an 18-year-old SDF candidate who was detained on the spot by other soldiers.

He has been charged with the attempted murder of a 25-year-old soldier, a local police spokesman said, declining to be identified.

The suspect “fired a rifle at the victim with the intent to kill”, the spokesman told AFP.

National broadcaster NHK reported that the wounded were a man in his 50s and two other men in their 20s.

Aerial footage broadcast by the station showed military personnel and civilians gathered around an emergency vehicle and police blocking nearby roads.

Some of the individuals seen in the footage appeared to be investigating the incident, as they were wearing covers over their shoes and hair.

A local resident told NHK that he saw several emergency vehicles rushing to the area at around 9.30am local time (8.30am Singapore time), but had not heard anything before that.

The training range is administered by the region’s Camp Moriyama and is a covered facility of more than 65,000 sq m.

Violent crime in Japan is extremely rare, and gun possession is tightly controlled.

But several high-profile incidents have rattled the country over the past year.

In July 2022, former prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead on the campaign trail by a man who allegedly targeted him over his links to the Unification Church.

The accused assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, was due to make his first appearance in court this week, but the session was cancelled after a package sent to the facility set off a metal detector.

It was later found to contain no explosives, but rather a petition signed by thousands calling for a lenient sentence for Yamagami.

He has garnered a surprising amount of sympathy from some quarters over the effect that his mother’s devotion to the Unification Church had on his family and childhood.

In April, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida escaped unharmed after a man threw an explosive device towards him at a campaign event.

That incident came shortly before Japan hosted the Group of Seven leaders’ summit in Hiroshima and prompted renewed calls for stepped-up security.

Thousands of police were deployed to secure the gathering, which passed without a security incident.

In May, police in the Nagano region, west of Tokyo, detained a man after an hours-long knifing and shooting rampage, followed by an extended stand-off.

The man killed four people, including two police officers, before he was detained. He is reportedly the son of the speaker of the local city assembly. AFP

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2023-06-14 02:15:39Z
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S'pore team takes 3rd place in rocket contest despite last-minute scramble over US Customs issues - The Straits Times

SINGAPORE - A team of Singapore university students who won third place in an international rocket-building competition almost had to pull out of the contest at the last minute because key parts of its rocket, including the engine, were held up at the United States Customs.

But after much scrambling and a heap of luck, the team was able to scrounge used parts and a spare motor from the organisers and participating teams.

Pulling in long hours on June 2 and 3 to put together a new rocket, while enduring the harsh conditions in California’s Mojave Desert, the team managed to launch its 3m rocket on June 4 at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry competition.

The rocketry team from the non-profit group Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (Seds) Singapore is only the second local civilian group to launch a rocket, after a commercial rocket firm. 

Carrying the safer two-thirds of the rocket in their suitcases, the eight team members from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) arrived at the Mojave Desert on June 2. There, they waited for the engine and base of the rocket to be shipped over.

They later learnt that the engine – the heart of their rocket – and the lower airframe had been held up at the US Customs due to an administrative conflict with the courier.

The team’s leader, Mr Dhruv Mittal, 25, rushed to Los Angeles International Airport while the rest scrambled for a plan B.

“Pulling out of the competition was not an option for us because of the expenses, effort and two years that was put into the trip. It was unacceptable to have no solution,” said Mr Mittal, a robotics engineer and SUTD graduate.

Seds Singapore’s rocketry team comprises 45 university students and graduates who worked on the rocket for about three years. They raised more than $30,000 to build and test the rocket, with funds coming from the Office for Space Technology and Industry, and Singapore rocket and space launch company Equatorial Space, which also provided lab space and help with hardware selection and launch procedures.

At the rocketry site in the US, the team members managed to find the remains of an old rocket to serve as an airframe. They also bought a traditional solid-fuel motor that the organisers managed to find. The members had been working with hybrid engines, so they had to adapt to whatever they had, build an igniter for the rocket, and use new ground-support equipment suitable for solid-fuel engines.

The team, named Singapore Propulsion Lab, worked round the clock to get its rocket ready for June 4, the last day of the competition.

The team members had also arrived in the US not feeling their best as many were fatigued from juggling school, work and preparing for the competition. The dry and cold desert environment did not help, as they managed to get just a little sleep in a car and their workbenches, with spiders and flies bothering them.

Half the team fell ill during the competition. NTU final-year student Hong Jin Hao, 24, developed a bacterial infection and was still recovering when he spoke to The Straits Times from Arizona on Tuesday.

“I felt really sick from the afternoon of June 3. I had a fever and my throat was hurting very badly. I just finished my antibiotics dose,” said the aerospace engineering student and the team’s aerostructures lead.

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2023-06-13 21:00:00Z
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Trump pleads not guilty in federal documents case - CNA

Trump has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and accuses Democratic President Joe Biden's administration of targeting him.

During a stop at Versailles, a Cuban restaurant, after the hearing, Trump told supporters that the United States was "rigged", "corrupt" and "in decline".

"We've got a government that's out of control," he said. Florida's Cuban-American community is a substantial Republican voting bloc in the politically competitive state.

He then flew back on his private jet to his New Jersey golf club, where he was due to address supporters at 8.15pm EDT.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is handling the case, accuses Trump of risking national secrets by taking thousands of sensitive papers with him when he left the White House in January 2021 and storing them in a haphazard manner at his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate and his New Jersey golf club.

Photos included in a grand-jury indictment released last week showed boxes of documents stored on a ballroom stage, in a bathroom and strewn across a storage-room floor.

Those records included information about the secretive US nuclear programme and potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the indictment said.

The 37-count indictment alleges Trump lied to officials who tried to get them back.

It also alleges Trump conspired with Nauta to keep classified documents and hide them from investigators. Nauta has worked for Trump at the White House and at Mar-a-Lago.

REPUBLICAN VOTERS, RIVALS LINE UP BEHIND TRUMP

Trump's legal woes have not hurt his standing with Republican voters.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday showed Trump still led rivals for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election by a wide margin, and 81 per cent of Republican voters viewing the charges as politically motivated.

Most of Trump's Republican presidential rivals have lined up behind him and accused the FBI of political bias, in a sharp turn from the party's traditional support for law enforcement.

Vivek Ramaswamy, one of those candidates, said outside the Miami courthouse that he would pardon Trump if he were elected.

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2023-06-13 19:22:00Z
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